


our gentle sin

by flybluejay



Category: Logan Lucky (2017), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ableism, Accidental Voyeurism, Age Difference, Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Stripper/Exotic Dancer, Animalistic Sex, Arm Play, Breeding kink if you squint, Car Sex, Clothed Sex, Clyde is a Rey man, Clyde is a tits man, Clyde is an ass man, Cockblocking, Come Licking, Come Marking, Come Swallowing, Comeplay, Coming In Pants, Creampie, Cunnilingus, Cussing, Daddy Kink, Dancer Rey (Star Wars), Desperate hard ons by Clyde, Discussions about Money, Doggy Style, Dom/sub Undertones, Door Sex, Drunk Dancing, Drunk Dialing, Drunken Confessions, Drunkenness, Dry Humping, Dry Sex, Dry riding, Emotional, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Sex, Erections, Exhibitionism, Exhibitionist sex, Eye Contact, F/M, Female Friendship, Feral Kink, Finger Sucking, Fingerfucking, Fluff and Smut, Forehead Touching, Grinding, HEA Guaranteed, Hand & Finger Kink, Hand Jobs, Height Kink, Honest Conversations, In Public, Interrupted Sex, Just the Tip, Lap Sex, Large Cock, Light Dom/sub, Lingerie, Making Out, Masturbation, Masturbation in Bathroom, Mirror Sex, Missionary Position, Money, Morning Sex, Mutual Orgasm, Mutual Pining, Naked Female Clothed Male, No Pregnancy, Older Man/Younger Woman, Oral Sex, Outdoor Sex, POV Multiple, Penetrative Sex, Penis In Vagina Sex, Pole Dancing, Pole dancer Rey, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Possessive Behavior, Possessive Clyde, Possessive Sex, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Public Sex, Relationship Discussions, Rey loves it, Rey wants the good the bad and the ugly, Reylogan, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Sex, Sex Work, Sex Worker Rey, Sex in a Car, Simulated Orgasm, Size Kink, Smut, Strippers & Strip Clubs, Stump Humping, Stump Play, Swearing, Table Sex, The tiniest mention of pregnancy, They are better at fucking than talking, Touching, Twerking, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Unsafe Sex, Vaginal, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Penetration, Vaginal Sex, Voyeurism, Voyeuristic sex, Wall Sex, age kink, bridal carry, exotic dancer Rey, jerking off, lap dance, needy sex, no pregnancy in this fic, stripper rey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:07:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 44,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27474754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flybluejay/pseuds/flybluejay
Summary: Is this really what he wanted to do: catch feelings for a woman who could certainly have her pick of the hundreds of men shuffling in and out of the club every week?  A woman at least ten years younger than him, who is so much more beautiful than he is handsome?He feels like he is rushing down a river at a speed he never imagined he’d go.  Not in a million years did Clyde ever picture himself falling for Miss Kira, the stripper.Clyde Logan's luck changes in all sorts of ways when he meets Miss Kira, a stripper at the club one town over.
Relationships: Clyde Logan & Rey (Star Wars), Clyde Logan/Rey (Star Wars)
Comments: 310
Kudos: 235





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For [midnightmorningcoffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightmorningcoffee/pseuds/midnightmorningcoffee), who was excited for this idea the second she heard it. Without you, none of this would have been written.
> 
> This fic is fully complete and will update regularly. Please check the tags and make sure you're comfortable with them before continuing. The tags will update each chapter.
> 
> [Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0QvNeR7umB1pHgLKZJtWNA?si=YTcxOihKSLKzjwOTX4VDnw), if you love music like I do 🎵

By [Allison](https://twitter.com/alantieislander)

And the nights were as dark as my baby

Half as beautiful, too 

— [“As It Was” (Hozier)](https://open.spotify.com/track/4xEHlCgoKd4RdrS79OPn9y)

Rey’s lingerie: [ front ](https://i1.wp.com/pabiuyou.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/white-patchwork-lace-two-piece-lingerie-elegant-short-bra-panty-sets.jpg?fit=600%2C800&ssl=1) and [ back/side ](https://ss.tidebuy.com/images/product/c/101108/26584/26584364_2.jpeg)

* * *

It had been a long nine months for Clyde.

Nine months since he’d met and slept with FBI Agent Sarah Grayson, and subsequently had his ass handed to him. 

He had only just renewed his driver’s license to be able to take her to the next town over, only for her to skip out that weekend, never to be seen nor heard from again. 

One night at Duck Tape, rag in hand as he wiped down the bar, Clyde unceremoniously commented to Jimmy that it was a good thing there weren’t no more FBI agents snooping around. Jimmy just as unceremoniously agreed, and that had been the last of Clyde’s romantic adventures.

Prior to that there had been women here and there. He was strong, he was tall, he was a veteran. He worked at a bar. He wasn’t sure how they’d found him nor how he found them, but they came together, fucked, then quickly drifted apart when they realized who he was, _what_ he was: a level-headed man who was like a dog on a bone when it came to the things he wanted. A man who wanted loyalty as fierce as the loyalty he was ready to give. 

Jimmy had been his anchor, till Jimmy had failed him. Left the heist money in a gas station parking lot and moved to Lynchburg without so much as a backward glance. 

Without him asking, Mellie had known Clyde would want his things moved out of Jimmy’s trailer. Together, without Jimmy, they’d set him up in a tiny little one-bedroom house with a couch, a kitchen, and his books all to himself. 

Clyde’s pride had been shot. But he had rebuilt it with his own two hands by learning to live without Jimmy: learning to move around the bar without Jimmy, learning to answer questions without deferring to Jimmy. His confidence grew to the point that he could look Joe Bang in the eye — the man they’d betrayed — and answer questions about their failed heist with his dignity intact.

He and Jimmy had made up since then, were friends again in all the ways that mattered, but in that handful of months, Clyde had learned to live apart from him. There was no one he looked to now but himself, no man or woman he had met yet with a loyalty as fierce as his own. So it was with a sense of reserve that he accepted Jimmy’s invitation to go out for drinks one night to the next town over.

“Earl said he’s comin’. Couple of the other guys, too. You can get out from behind your own bar. Let someone else take care of you for once.” 

Jimmy had sounded earnest enough on the phone, and Clyde had to admit to himself he hadn’t found anything to do with the heist money after Miss Grayson had left town. He’d paid off the house and bought as many books as he could think of, but he was still sitting on piles of cash with no idea how to spend it. 

He decided to go. Maybe he could pick up a new cocktail recipe to try and recreate at Duck Tape. 

So he is naturally extremely flustered when the first thing he sees as they pull up are the flashing words: GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS.

Clyde goes very still very suddenly, his back hunched over in the cab of Jimmy’s truck. “You said we was gettin’ drinks.”

Jimmy sighs, adjusts his hat. “I did say that. I just didn’t say where.”

“Do they even serve drinks here?” Clyde can’t help but retort. Sometimes he resorts to sarcasm when he feels especially misled. In their current situation, he feels it’s justified.

 _“Yes,_ yeah. Yes, they do.” Jimmy glances over at him. Clyde stares out the window, thinking. “You comin’ in or what?” 

Clyde ignores his question. There are some points he needs to hammer out first. “We ain’t never been to a place like this before.” 

_“You_ ain’t never been to a place like this before,” Jimmy says pointedly. 

The two of them finally look at each other, understanding starting to creep in.

Clyde breaks the stare first. “Why are we here?” He feels like he’s repeating himself.

When Jimmy doesn’t answer, Clyde looks over at his brother again. “How long you gonna be?” 

Jimmy scoffs. Clyde knows his brother gets frustrated real quick. “Clyde, just … just come on inside. It ain’t gonna be anythin’ you haven’t already seen.”

“You don’t know that.” Clyde is appalled. 

He’s a little excited, too, although he doesn’t want to let it slip. 

_“Yeah,_ I _do_ know that.” Jimmy doesn’t take his shit — never has. “Look, I don’t want you sittin’ out here while the rest of us is in there. Just … come on inside and sit down.”

Clyde stares at Jimmy as he weighs his options. Jimmy stares right back at him. Finally, without a word, Clyde flips the lock on the passenger door and hefts himself out of the car. 

Inside, he feels the bass of the song on the speakers thumping from his sternum clear through to the back of his spine. It’s dark and poorly lit, but he still wishes he’d brought his hat in from the truck to cover his face — anything to hide the expression he knows must be creeping onto his face right about now. 

It’s much busier than Duck Tape is on a Friday night, and the clientele is considerably different. The room is large, and seems larger in the low lighting. A long stage thrusts into the middle of the room, penetrated by a golden pole stretching down from the ceiling. A bar runs along both sides of the stage, all of the bar stools occupied by men and a few women. The rest of the room is full of booths and couches — many, many couches — where men are seated with girls on their laps. On the far side of the room, Clyde can barely make out steps leading up to a large red curtain. 

The group of men stand huddled, none of them sure where to go or what to do. 

Suddenly, the lights turn down as the music turns way, way up. Jimmy looks around at them before shoving a roll of money into Clyde’s hand and walking up to the stage, a determined look in his eye. Most of the other men join him, but Clyde hangs back, wanting to take stock of the situation. 

The speaker system is shit, but Clyde can make out that names are being announced as men whoop and cheer. 

_Crystal! Angel! Lexi! Destiny!_

Clyde decides to shuffle closer to the stage, since it seems like that’s where everyone is congregating. 

His mouth tightens as girls begin strutting out. They are balanced on six-inch heels that look like they could slice a man’s throat. The song changes, and the first girl breaks into a practiced routine, gripping the pole as men begin to throw bills at the stage. 

Clyde’s brow furrows and he immediately stares down at the floor. He shouldn’t be seeing this. 

_What was Jimmy thinking, bringing him to a place like this? He should’ve known Clyde wouldn’t like it._

Clyde glances at the stage again, only to see more of the same. He pulls his gaze back down, but not before catching Jimmy looking at him from the other side of the stage. 

Jimmy jerks his head toward the stage. Clyde just stares straight down in response. 

He wasn’t doing things for Jimmy anymore. Not like before, at least. 

Each girl takes the pole as her name is announced, spinning and turning and then putting her hands and knees on the floor. Clyde glares at the ground, only glancing up occasionally before darting his eyes back down. On and on the announcer drones, giving each girl a few minutes of stage time as men approach to drop bills on their bodies. Clyde has just dared to lift his eyes to Jimmy’s, determined to ask for the keys to the truck, when a final girl takes the stage.

She’s a brunette, and tall. She strides confidently to the pole, looping herself around it and slowly spinning, feet in the air. Her feet are bare, and she keeps her toes pointed as she floats, fairy-like, half-naked body suspended above the men before her. 

Her legs are _so_ long. Clyde suddenly finds himself wanting to lick up the full length of them. 

His face heats at the thought.

Suddenly, she lands on the stage, immediately falling into deep splits facing away from him. She grips the pole as she flexes her ass muscles up and down till she is bouncing vigorously. Her legs are spread wide open, the fat of her thighs and ass jiggling for all to see. 

Clyde feels nails massaging his palm and realizes he is clenching his own right hand. His eyes never leave the stage.

She quickly breaks her splits and lowers herself onto open knees, facing the audience. Her hands knead her own breasts as she bites her lip. She glances around suggestively into the crowd before her eyes lock onto his. 

Clyde stiffens so hard his spine cracks.

With her eyes still trained on him, she snakes a hand between her thighs, teasing the edge of her lingerie panties as though to lift them off.

With her other hand, she slips a finger between her teeth and _tugs,_ head tilted back _._ Her eyes glitter beneath her eyelashes and the waving strands of hair on her face. Clyde doesn’t know whether he is standing, sitting, or floating as she starts to pump her thighs up and down, still kneeling. 

It looks as though she is sitting on someone’s lap being fucked from behind — and looking straight at him as it’s happening.

Every touch of her hand to her own body seems to burn him. His entire body is frozen, bound by a spell she might never release him from.

He feels Jimmy’s eyes hot on him, but he ignores that in favor of continuing to watch.

She puts a finger to her lips, as though to shush the roaring crowd, and finally tears her eyes away from his. 

She lays fully down on her back and resumes dragging her hands all over her own body. Her back arches repeatedly, lifting up and down in time with the music as she runs her hands over her own breasts and between her legs. She looks for all the world as though she is getting herself off in public, mouth open in fake moans.

Clyde stares at her upside-down eyes, which are shut in pretend ecstasy, till in one crystallized moment, her eyes flutter open and she looks — _straight at him._

He knows this is exactly what her face would look like if he were fucking her. 

She’s looking at him like she _wants_ him to be the one fucking her. 

Clyde is hypnotized: pinned in place by the look on her face, the arch of her back and legs. The fantasy that she is looking at him while she touches herself makes him feel warm all over.

Something in their eye contact makes her shift, because she abruptly shuts her eyes and lifts her back all the way up till she is sitting, knees propped. She then turns her face to the floor, hands and knees straddling an invisible someone as she grinds against the floor, her rear to the audience. 

Bills litter the stage as she grinds and grinds, legs spread so wide Clyde can feel the tension of her muscles against his own thighs, as though he were the one under her. He can see the thin black string of her lingerie bottoms resting between her full ass cheeks, and he feels an urge to take the string between two of his fingers and pull till it rips. 

His stomach turns.

The lights black out and then come back up again. When they do, the stage is empty.

With great trepidation, Clyde forces himself to meet Jimmy’s stare across the stage. He’s afraid of what he’s about to find out about himself when he sees his older brother’s eyes. 

Jimmy is setting a thick roll of bills on the stage when he looks up at Clyde. He has a _very_ smug smile on his face.

Clyde slides his own roll of cash onto the empty stage before hunching as quickly as he can into an empty booth, eyes trained on the table.

* * *

_“How you doin’, sugar?”_

_“You look lonely, handsome.”_

_“This seat taken?”_

The invitations eventually taper off as Clyde nurses a glass of water, his face set like stone against the women approaching him. He hadn’t taken the time to look at any of them, so consumed was he with memorizing _her_ face as she touched herself.

Once he is convinced he could pull up in his mind’s eye every curve of her cheekbones, the exact color of the flush of her stomach, does he let his gaze drift back up to his surroundings, only to lock eyes on _her_ again, smiling prettily for none other than —

Clyde sets his jaw and looks back at the table.

Let Jimmy have his fun. They’d both seen her on the stage, and Clyde getting hard at the sight of her wasn’t the same as staking a claim. His brother had every right to talk to her, and do _more_ than talk if Jimmy was so inclined.

What had Jimmy said to him? _Just come on inside and sit down._

And sit was exactly what Clyde would do. 

He was busy trying not to recite to himself the list of girls he had liked that had fallen in love with his brother when yet another voice speaks up beside him.

“I’ve been looking for you all night, darling. Where’ve you been?”

Clyde doesn’t lift his eyes from the tabletop. “Ain’t been nowhere except right here.”

“What’s your name, stranger?” She sounds closer now. _Accent’s strange. She ain’t from around here._

“Clyde Logan, miss.” He finally looks up at her, eyes wary till he realizes who has just come up to him. 

_Her._

She smiles at him, dark lipstick curved in a knowing smile. 

_Oh, lord ..._

“May I sit here?” She gestures toward him. 

He doesn’t answer as she slides onto his lap instead of the empty space beside him. His gaze inadvertently drifts down to the thick bills wrapped in the garters around her thighs. She fits a hand into the hair at the back of his neck, her eyes made large and entrancing by dark eyeshadow and liner.

Clyde does his best not to breathe too noisily — not when she’s right on top of him like this. He’s seen her on the stage and across the room, but seeing as she has decided of her own free will to come so close to him, Clyde allows himself to lower his gaze and take in _all_ of her. The exact proportions of her consume all his concentration as he weighs in his mind how each part of her body would feel in his right hand. 

It takes him five seconds of deliberation to decide that she is, as he suspected, _perfect._

A black collar circles her slender neck, connected by a string that trails down between her breasts. The string is connected to strips of black fabric that outline the cups of her lingerie. The outline, in turn, accentuates the way her tits curve — _her tits,_ he repeats to himself worriedly — which sit soft and round on her body. Her legs stretch out between his legs, but where his are thick, bulky, and powerful, hers are soft, fleshy, and warm. Where he is brute strength and hardness, she is graceful, petite — a dancer draped on the arm of a bear.

Then there are those bewitching eyes … that chin … that _mouth._ There’s a dimple on her right cheek that he can hardly bear to look at, but it’s her mouth that seemingly does him in. The shape of her lips and the way the corners turn up or down are the axis on which his world now turns. 

From the moment he saw her smile he knew he’d be obsessed with her mouth, right down to the delicious, low-pitched British accent that make his toes clench in his boots. 

By the looks of her he figures she’s about twenty. He already knows what Mellie would say: _She’s a little too young for you for things to be decent, Clyde_. So why does the thought that he is at least ten years older than this girl just make him feel even warmer in his chest — make him want her even _more?_

He swallows hard. 

Her thick, low voice interrupts his thoughts. “The other girls told me you’ve been looking at me all night. Aren’t you going to be a gentleman and ask my name?”

“Figured you’d tell me at some point anyway. Otherwise how would I know who to ask for next time?” _Fuck him. Does he really think there’s gonna be a next time?_

She laughs right in his ear, cutting through his nervousness. He’s never heard a woman other than Mellie laugh so close to him before. Most women he’s been with … well, they don’t laugh around him, really. 

“You’re right, darling. My name is Kira.”

He looks at her neck. He knows that’s not her real name, but he’s not going to bother her for her real one now. He’s nothing if not patient, Clyde is. 

His silence is rewarded — _as silence usually is,_ he reasons. “Do people ever call you handsome, Clyde? Because you are, aren’t you?” She traces his bearded jaw with one finger, staring into his eyes as he looks back at her, ensnared. “Tall. Handsome. _Built.”_ Her hand slides down to his stomach, pushing gently against the muscle there. His lower jaw works but otherwise he stays absolutely still, his sign that he is thinking hard. 

“Clyde?" She seems to want his attention, so he lifts his eyes from her hand on his chest and looks at her. Her gaze is serious, which he likes more than he is willing to admit. 

He likes a girl who can take things seriously. 

“Clyde, your brother paid for a lap dance for you. Point of fact, he gave me enough for several lap dances for you. Is that alright with you?” She looks _earnest,_ which pleases him for some reason. He’d have to think about that later. 

For now, he nods. He feels calmer at the thought that he knows exactly where she will be: right in front of him, her voice within earshot, body well within his reach.

She grins at his acceptance, and his stomach does that funny twist it’s been doing since the first time he saw her.

“Mmm, tell me about this.” She strokes his prosthetic arm carefully, as though Clyde has nerve endings there. 

He’d wondered how long it would take her to bring that up. Before they can talk about it, he has something he wants to clear up first. He thinks of what his quick glances around the club revealed to him about the nature of being a customer here and clears his throat roughly to start the conversation.

“Miss. Miss Kira. The things you’re about to do, they only been done to me by women who cared about me at the time. But I don’t think that’s the reason why you’ll be doin’ those things to me.”

“You’re a very sensible man, Clyde. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Just a few folks, miss. But I know I am.”

“If I do those … those _things_ to you, Clyde, you don’t think I care about you?”

“‘Course not, miss. Respectfully. We only just met. And I can see how much money Jimmy put under your — your, your garter there.” He doesn’t look. “You gonna tell me this don’t have anything to do with that?” His tone is accusatory; harsher than he meant it to be, if he was being honest with himself. Which he wants to be — honest with himself, that is. 

“Don’t you want someone to care for you, Clyde?” As she talks, she never stops stroking up and down his chest, only reaching up once to play with the tie of her lingerie top around her neck, making as though to take it off. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Clyde can just see the curve of her breasts, pale in the low light of the club.

He sets his jaw and continues to look over her shoulder, eyes unmoving as her body leans against his, long and slim. “I only want someone to act like they care for me if they really mean it, miss.”

She stops playing with her lingerie, stops pushing against him, and turns to face him dead-on, hands on his shoulders. _Well, ain’t that somethin’,_ he marvels to himself. He’s inordinately pleased by the amount of attention she’s decided to give him. He can’t remember the last time any woman besides Mellie has taken him this seriously. 

“Well, Clyde, as you might’ve guessed, I don’t come here for fun, or to dick around, in a manner of speaking.” She snorts at her own joke and Clyde lets a small smile slip to encourage her. “This is my place of work.” Her perfect mouth stills into a straight line. “A girl’s gotta eat, Clyde. And sometimes, a girl needs help with more than just that.” 

She looks him dead in the eye, sincere as hell. He stares at her, not quite willing to admit to himself how eager he is to hear her next words.

“What if I need someone to care for me?”

That surprises him mightily. “You need that?”

“Of course I do. Not every girl does, but I do.” She resettles herself on his lap. One thumb rubs his arm above the prosthetic.

“What are you sayin’, Miss Kira?”

She looks into his eyes, the sensual curves of her mouth formed into a smile. Her hand has come to rest on his belt buckle, toying with it. 

“I’m saying you could take care of me, Clyde Logan. If you wanted.”

* * *

_I’m saying you could take care of me, Clyde Logan. If you wanted._

As he takes in her offer, he stares at her to gauge how much the statement really means to her. He decides that her wide eyes, rimmed as they are by liner and eyeshadow, make her seem incapable of insincerity — and he won’t fault her for it. In fact, he counts it as a point in her favor. 

_I’m saying you could take care of me, Clyde Logan. If you wanted._

What Clyde _wants_ to do is lay her down on the couch in his living room, stretch out each of her limbs, and lay his full weight on top of her — his arms over her arms, his legs over her legs — and _push_ until she is inside of him. He wants to _consume_ her. 

If _that_ is not an option, then it’s very simple: he’d like to take home all the outfits she owns, heels and all, and subject them to his investigation with the knowledge that every scrap of clothing she’s ever worn is in his possession.

She asked what he wanted, but none of those seem to be a possibility at the moment. 

For the first time in a long time, he is not afraid of someone or something outside of his control: he is afraid of _himself._

Afraid he’ll somehow forget about her when she’s not right in front of him and he has to try to remember these precious few moments when a woman actually _looked_ at him.

Afraid of what he’ll do to his own body when he _does_ think about her. Afraid of the reactions his heart and mind and _dick_ will have, and how even now he has to physically strain to keep himself from doing exactly what he wants with her.

Afraid of what he would do to her if he _did_ ever get her alone — alone and vulnerable and soft and moaning ... 

Internally, he sighs, eyes drifting downward in what he now recognizes as lovesick despair. _Whipped, Logan. You’re whipped._

Her grip on his belt suddenly tightens as an upbeat song starts up. Her smile is like the sun upon him. “There’s my cue.” 

She turns to face away from him and begins bouncing her rear just as she did onstage, ass cheeks grazing his abs. She finally tugs at something on the collar of her lingerie and loosens the straps around her torso, till the whole contraption falls off to reveal her fully naked back. 

Clyde’s mind can’t move fast enough. Half an hour ago she was grinding into the stage, but _right now_ , this second, she is climbing into his lap, straddling him with her bare legs. Now she’s running her hands over his knees, bare tits grazing the tops of his thighs. Now she’s touching his arm ever so gently, eyes turned on him over her shoulder as she says — 

“Won’t you look at me, Clyde? I’ll be here awhile, and I’d hate for you not to enjoy yourself.”

He notes anxiously that his breathing is _very_ heavy. “‘M enjoying myself ... just fine ... Miss Kira. Th-thank you.”

 _“Thank you,_ he says.” She gives a little laugh. Her hands are on his knees, then on the table as she braces herself, never once turning to let him see her front. As the song ends, she looks over her shoulder at him, her profile — her perfect, beautiful, gorgeous profile _—_ outlined in lights.

Clyde’s jaw has tightened so much the muscles are sore. He is gripping the seat underneath him, body rigid. The sight of her ass on his legs is burned in his memory for a thousand lifetimes. 

“Did you like that, darling?”

He has a sinking feeling he’s gone temporarily mute. The full length of his dick is trying to cut through the seam of his jeans, and he wonders if she’ll notice if he adjusts himself.

A second song starts, this time a sultry country number. He thinks it might be the same song as the one that just played, or it could be completely different. Either way, he’s not of a mind to rightly say because Miss Kira has turned around to face him, giving him a full view of her bare chest.

After five seconds of direct eye contact with her tits, Clyde decides that they are also _perfect._ Her nipples are pink, still full and round from her exertion and the warmth radiating off them both. He’s seen a lot of curvy women in his day, but to see a woman whose every body part can fit snug in his hand … His dick strains upward and he is trembling at the thought. 

Abruptly, she places her palms against both his own, spreading his right hand and his prosthetic hand open. If his metal fingers are ugly or cold to her, she doesn’t let it show. 

She twines their fingers together, murmuring, “I _love_ how big your hands are, Clyde. How thick your fingers are.” 

Slowly, she guides both his hands down to her legs. “Put your hands on my thighs, darling. Just like that.” 

He rests his fingers lightly on her thighs on the bare skin just by her garters, then silently sucks in air when she pushes closer to him, his palms pushed up hard against her leg muscles. 

“Don’t move your hands from there, love. Although if you do … I can’t say I’ll really be mad."She grins, a suggestive smirk that has him thinking the impurest of impure thoughts.

Still, Clyde makes sure his hands on her thighs don’t stray from where she’s placed them.

They continue like this, Jimmy having paid for several songs’ worth of lap dances for Clyde. He keeps his hands on her thighs the whole time, except for the moments when she twists to face away from him so he can place his hands just below her ass instead — her bouncy, round, _perfect_ ass. 

She is smooth, so smooth all over. He’s never felt a woman as smooth as her. The feeling of her can’t help but remind him of how _he_ might feel to someone else: his coarse facial hair, the moles that give an uneven surface to his face, his clumsy right hand and the terrible size of it. His arms and legs are hulking and overwhelming, not fit for a woman whose every body part could be called petite. He pictures what it would look like to see him bent over her as she sighs, soft flesh giving way under muscle as he — 

No. Clyde Logan with someone like Miss Kira would be nothing more than a damn shame. 

He lets her take him out of his thoughts when she turns to him at the end of another song. He didn’t realize how starved he was for the sight of _just_ her eyes till she turns her face to him again, cheeks pink with the effort of dancing. His gut suddenly twists when he realizes this is it.

“Clyde, I —”

“Miss —”

They speak at the same time. 

“Kira,” she finishes for him. “Just Kira.” She can’t seem to look him dead in the eye, which hurts, although he doesn’t know why. 

After a moment of silence, during which Clyde wonders if he was supposed to say something, she seems to decide something in her head. She quickly adopts the same smile she had on the stage. “Will you be back to see me?” she asks, lips in a slight pout.

Clyde can sense it’s a question she’s asked before, so he doesn’t hesitate to remind her of what is special, and just between them: “You said you need someone to take care of you, didn’t you?” 

She looks taken aback at how good his memory is. It’s a look Clyde is familiar with: he gets it from Jimmy all the time, although Jimmy always looks considerably more put out whenever Clyde reminds him of something. Miss Kira … Miss Kira just looks, well … _happy._

“I did say that, didn’t I? Well, then you _must_ come back.” She’s positively beaming now. 

His lower jaw jerks as he allows himself a small smile back at her, his lips closed. “Friday. I’ll come back next Friday.” 

She smiles impossibly wider, genuine, and Clyde feels a piece of him shift loose deep inside. She leans in, close enough for her hair to brush his cheekbone. He doesn’t move a muscle as she whispers, “I’ll have a surprise for you when you come back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **DISCLAIMER** // Any resemblances to any other fics or AUs are completely unintentional. Over the months that I wrote this, I purposely read _no_ Reylogan or stripper Rey fics, or anything I thought remotely resembled what I wanted to write, in order to keep my writing 100% original and inspired only by the film and my own ideas. 
> 
> The character of Jess is not meant to be based on the Star Wars canon character Jessika Pava. In this fic, Jess is an original character who I created.
> 
> In regards to stripping, pole dancing, exotic dancing, club management, and sex work, I have combined elements of various strip clubs and club management styles, all based on real-life examples, to create a setting effective for what I wanted to accomplish. There are areas where I had to take liberties for the sake of the piece, but I did a fair amount of research on stripping because I wanted to represent it fairly. I have great respect for people who choose this as their way of work. There are some who did not have the ability to make that choice and were forced into the profession for various reasons. I mourn on behalf of those men and women and people and hope to support them in any way I can. 
> 
> Strippers are not prostitutes. Anything Rey does that seems more within the range of prostitution is theoretically not allowed in strip clubs. These things may happen in strip clubs, but whenever and if they do, they are between the stripper and that individual customer (and possibly the management of that club), and no stripper should ever be made or expected to do what they do not want to do. Rey does these things to Clyde because she wants to, and because she and Clyde are consenting adults who are attracted to one another.
> 
> Please message me directly on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/flybluejay_) if you feel any elements have been plagiarized or if a part of the portrayal was offensive and inaccurate to you. Purely negative comments will most likely be deleted as I prefer to have sensitive and important conversations one-on-one as much as possible, rather than in a public space and in a way that might be harmful to others.
> 
>  **RESOURCES** // Here are a few resources if you’re curious about learning about stripping and strippers.
> 
> [Elle Stanger](https://www.stripperwriter.com/index.htm) is a Portland stripper and sex educator who is an active advocate for sex workers and education about sex work.
> 
> **VIDEOS**
> 
>   * [How to Treat Strippers, According to Strippers (Vice)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQVOGjbE4aQ&feature=youtu.be)
>   * [How to Attend a Strip Club Like a Gentleman (alpha.m)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRV7jggwagg)
> 

> 
> **YOUTUBE CHANNELS**
> 
>   * [Dancing with BELLA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVOyLY4-rhLAPCHKhHbwyIA)
>   * [Jazzmen Black](https://www.youtube.com/user/jazzmenblack)
>   * [Nina Unrated](https://www.youtube.com/user/NinaUnrated)
> 

> 
> **ARTICLES**
> 
>   * [How out-of-work strippers made their show virtual and are 'taking the power back' (LA Times)](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-10-05/jumbos-clown-room-cyber-clown-girls-strip-show-covid)
>   * [9 Strip Club & Lap Dance Etiquette Rules Explained by Strippers (Vice)](https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/nn93aq/strippers-explain-strip-club-etiquette-723)
>   * [Who Gets the Money You Spend in a Strip Club? (Mel Magazine)](https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/who-gets-the-money-you-spend-in-a-strip-club)
>   * [I’m a Strip Club House Mom (Cosmopolitan)](https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/advice/a5553/strip-club-house-mom/)
>   * [Twenty Hours in a New York Strip Club (Vice)](https://www.vice.com/en/article/kwx3ey/twenty-hours-in-new-york-citys-raunchiest-strip-club-456)
>   * [Sex in the Champagne Room (Queer Majority)](https://www.queermajority.com/essays-all/sex-in-the-champagne-room)
>   * [An Open Letter to the Extras Girl (Tits and Sass)](%E2%80%9C)
> 



	2. Chapter 2

Scared to death that she might be it

That the love is real, that the shoe might fit 

— [“Beyond” (Leon Bridges)](https://open.spotify.com/track/1Omt5bfz1tZUCqd26HxbS0?si=-SMh4d_qS4OvstEGv5vEUA)

* * *

The first rule among the girls: no special favors for the customers. No “extras” in the private rooms, or else you get ripped to shreds for putting the livelihood of the club in danger. Not only did management not look kindly on a girl creating potential prostitution charges for the club, the other girls certainly didn’t look kindly on increased competition.

After all, a blow job in a private room makes a lap dance at the bar look positively _churchy._

So it had been bold of Rey to take Clyde’s hands — one metal and cold and thin, the other flesh and warm and hard all at the same time — and it had been even bolder of her to put them on her thighs. It had been _unbelievably_ bold of her to hint that she’d be fine with his hands doing more, touching more of her. 

She never once expected that her legs would feel cold and empty when he finally moved his hands away. But then again, she never once expected the first time she’d become aroused at work would be when she was giving a lap dance to a man who looked at her as though a lap dance was the most solemn, precious gift ever given.

Rey shuddered as she thought of the fingers of his right hand. What had she said to him? _I love how big your hands are, Clyde. How thick your fingers are._

She imagines those same fingers now, sliding over her ass, gripping it to pull her tight against him as she rocked on his lap. He would look at her with that serious expression, eyes alight and never moving from hers as his hand covers her whole hip. She imagines him behind her, the weight of his arousal pressing at her back as his shoulders pin her down, arms caging around her as he pushes — 

She huffs, annoyed at the dream she’d let herself slip into. 

She’s never felt the least bit turned on at work before. 

Why now? Why _him?_

And what in the _world_ had possessed her to say the things she’d said to Clyde? 

_What if I need someone to care for me?_

_I’m saying you could take care of me, Clyde Logan. If you wanted._

She hadn’t thought she’d ever say those words to anyone, _ever_. And at her place of work, no less! 

His eyes were warm and whiskey-colored, and they had pierced and uncovered a part of her soul she didn’t know was left unguarded. 

At first, she had simply given him her moving body, since she thought that was what he’d come into the club to have. And from the effect the lap dances seemed to have on him, her body was indeed what part of him, or _parts_ of him, had wanted. 

But like any good stripper worth her salt, she had paid attention to his body language, and she had read him like a book. Right away she could tell this man wanted the real her.

It wouldn’t do any good to flatter and cajole him, repeating all the things she said to every other man on every other day, because he was _nothing_ like every other man. Didn’t try to sweet talk her out of some misplaced sense of obligation. Didn’t grab at her, didn’t try to pull out and jerk off on her chest.

He just sat, still as still water, while she danced: deeply attentive, deeply interested, clearly deep in thought.

Other than the fact that he thought himself a very reasonable man, which Rey also could not deny, there was no ego or pretension to be found in Clyde Logan. He knew who he was, and he even seemed to know who _she_ was. The greatest surprise she could give him was to be as honest as possible with him. And Rey could certainly do that. Rey _liked_ to do that.

So she shot straight with him: _You could take care of me, if you wanted._

When their last song ended, Rey instinctively braced herself for the flattery that always came. 

_Come home with me, sugar._

_I wanna take you out somewhere nice._

_Let’s get you outta this hellhole._

It seemed she was always trying to let some man down gently while simultaneously enticing them to come back. She was perpetually prepared to bristle, perpetually prepared to put up an icy front to defend herself and her choice of employment — so it shocked her when she realized that she couldn’t muster up the energy to act cool and unconcerned when it came to Clyde. For reasons she didn’t yet comprehend, she desperately wanted him to understand, wanted him to know that just by being who he was he had understood _her._

She knows it’s unfair. Unrealistic. They have only _just_ met. 

But something in her longs to believe that someone like him — thoughtful, serious, unaffected — could care for someone like her.

She squares her shoulders against the feeling of longing and bends down to pull her heels back on. 

“Miss _Kira.”_ A teasing voice fills the dressing room.

When Rey doesn’t answer, the voice becomes more insistent. “Miss Kira. _Rey.”_

 _“Yes,_ Miss Crystal?” Rey says her friend’s stage name pointedly. She doesn’t turn her head as she contorts her lips in the mirror, reapplying lipstick before the last stage rotation of the night. She couldn’t let Jess’ playfulness slow her down tonight. Rey had enough things on her mind, the first of them being how soon she could fall into bed and start trying to figure out what had happened with —

“That fella you were just with. Who was he?”

“He said his name was — _mmm_ — Clyde.” Rey carefully schools her expression, rolling her lips as she turns to her friend so as not to seem too eager. “I haven’t seen him before. Have you?”

“Lord, no. I would’ve remembered a man like that.” Jess collapses next to Rey, draping one leg idly over the chair. Her red wig cascades down the back of it. “He sure was tall.”

“Wasn’t he, though?” Rey bites her tongue as she pulls out her eyelash curler. 

_Don’t let it show. Don’t give yourself away._

“I saw he had a prosthetic arm, too.” Out of the corner of her eye, Rey sees Jess eying her. Suddenly, she swoops in, face inches away from Rey’s. _“Rey_. You let him touch you.”

Rey freezes, stomach dropping. 

It takes her only a moment’s thought to decide to tell the truth. “I did, Jess, and I —” 

“Oh, girl. It’s fine.” Jess waves a hand and sits back, considering Rey comfortably. Rey chalks up her friend’s acceptance to the fact that she hadn’t tried to lie. 

“You know management says we can let them touch us if we want. It’s just that most of us never want them to. And I thought you never would, neither … till tonight. ” Jess leans forward. “Did he say anythin’ to make you do it? I could tell Chewie not to let him back in if he forced you.” Her friend’s eyes were nothing but concerned.

“No, no, nothing was forced.” The words come out more rushed than Rey intends. 

_The only thing that felt forced was saying good-bye._

Jess sets both feet on the floor and threads fingers through Rey’s hair as though plying her to keep talking. “Yeah, the way he was touchin’ you, looked like he was treatin’ you like a china doll,” she says thoughtfully.

Rey bites her lip, the memory too fresh for her to have realized that Jess was right. There was a reason other girls set strict boundaries with their customers. Big as he was, he could have easily dragged her across him and bruised her thighs once she told him he could touch her. He _had_ been careful with her, even when he hadn’t been obliged to.

The words are out before Rey can stop herself. 

_“God,_ Jess, I hope I see him again.” 

Wide-eyed, she looks at her friend. Here Rey was, telling the truth to someone else before Rey herself even knew it was the truth. 

But Jess was grinning madly. She whirls in front of Rey, plucking the eyelash curler out of her hand and cupping her chin.

“My _stars,_ Rey, but you two just looked so good together. He was fuckin’ _massive_ underneath you! He could eat you right up.” 

Rey’s breath drops out at the image, but Jess babbles right on: “What if he asks for you again? Will you let him touch you? Well, of course you will, you’re not an idiot — ‘course you’d let him touch you again.” Jess scoffs at the ludicrousness of refusing a man like Clyde. “Rey, what if he comes back and buys a private room with you?” She shakes her head, laughing happily. “Girl, what are you gonna let him _do_ to you?”

Rey is asking herself the very same question. She has already broken her hard-won boundaries once for this man, and that without a backward glance. What more _would_ she let him do to her?

She opens her mouth to reply when someone clears their throat.

“Miss Kira?”

Rey and Jess whip their heads around at once. Jess scrambles to her feet once she sees who it is.

“Yes, Miss Whitney?” 

Their house mom’s voice is friendly enough, tinged with an unmistakable West Virginian twang. But Rey knows the woman’s personality is much more shrewd and calculating than her accent lets on. Miss Whitney looks down at a scrap of paper in her hand, keen eyes not missing a thing. Panicked, Rey wonders how much she’d heard before coming into the dressing room.

“Kira, I have here that you had ten lap dances with a single customer. Is that correct?” 

“Yes, ma’am.” She’d given Clyde ten lap dances in a row. About thirty minutes of her time, all told. Nothing unusual about that; Rey’s customers often requested more than one dance from her, so what was she — 

“And he paid you?”

Despite the fact that his brother had already paid, Clyde insisted on tipping her separately from that. He steadfastly ignored the bills in her garter, opting instead to place them into her hand as he looked her in the eye. The memory of the brush of his prosthetic fingers still sent a warm thrill up her spine.

“Yes, ma’am, he paid before he left.” 

“Well, his brother paid you some more. Several hundred dollars more.”

Jess squeals, gripping Rey’s arm in delight. 

Rey is incredulous. “Several _hundred_ more?” She gapes at Miss Whitney. “But I didn’t give any dances to his brother. Did he say why he was paying me extra?” 

“He said he and his brother have come into a lot of money recently and don’t have a need for it all for themselves.” Miss Whitney looks sharply at Rey as she says her next words: “He also said he’s never seen his brother look at a girl the way he looks at you.”

Rey’s heart leaps into her throat as Jess cries, “Oh, _Rey,_ that’s —”

Miss Whitney cuts her off. “If he comes back, I want you right on top of him.” 

Rey’s breath catches. 

The idea is intimate, and if Rey were being honest with herself, it’s what she wants, too. But Miss Whitney’s tone is impersonal, and the implication decidedly _not_ what Rey has in mind. 

“His brother says the family has money. Well, if that man wants to spend it all on you, I want it to be at _this_ strip club. That man is a business opportunity for us, and for you.” 

Rey feels filleted open by her stare, as though the contents of her private conversation with Jess were open to Miss Whitney’s inspection. 

The older woman’s voice is unremorseful as she says, “A girl can go far as a stripper if she knows who to take advantage of.” 

Rey has always been a hard worker. She knows in stripping a girl has to work for her money; money never comes to a girl. And Rey is nothing if not persevering and professional.

But now that Rey has had just a glimpse of the man behind the reserved exterior, her wildly beating heart tells her it will be hard to keep things strictly professional. She doesn’t know if she can in good faith treat an interaction with Clyde as a mere _business transaction …_ not when she feels like he is giving as much to her as she is to him.

Rey grits her teeth and returns Miss Whitney’s gaze as evenly as she can. 

“Yes, ma’am.”

* * *

“You know you can get a room alone with her, right?”

Clyde freezes in the middle of the parking lot, eyes trained on the ground. “What did you say?”

Jimmy keeps walking toward the truck, only turning back to look at Clyde. “With her. Miss Kira. One hour’s worth of dances, nobody else around. Have her all to yourself.”

Clyde thinks of the red curtain at the top of the stairs. He jerks back into motion, arms swinging a little too forcefully as he lopes to the truck. “Now why would I want to do that?”

Jimmy climbs into the driver’s seat beside him before looking at him meaningfully. “I saw the way you was lookin’ at her. I saw she let you touch her.” Jimmy looks out the window, thoughtful. “You know, you’re not supposed to be able to touch the girls in there. Only if one of them lets you … thinks you’re _special_ enough.” 

Clyde didn’t like the way Jimmy said _special,_ but the meaning was clear enough. So it was only natural that Clyde follow up by saying, “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

Jimmy keeps talking as he puts the key in the ignition. “It’s called a private room, in case you’re wonderin’. And brother, you’ve got enough money to keep her locked up in there for _hours.”_

Clyde stays silent, hand in his lap as he thinks and thinks.

Jimmy studies him briefly, finally tossing out, “That’s all I’m sayin’. You can get a private room.” 

Jimmy knows when to back off, but it doesn’t keep a self-satisfied grin from splitting his face. Clyde hates it when his brother gets that look: it means he knows something Clyde doesn’t.

Clyde could play the fool all he wanted when Jimmy was around, but at home, in front of his bathroom mirror, he isn’t fooling anybody — especially not himself. He stares silently at his reflection as his mind turns over and over the many positions she had treated him to.

There was the memory of her sitting on his lap, one hand wound around his neck, playing with his hair as he stared down at their legs tangled together.

There was the memory of the collar around her neck, lingerie tracing a line between her breasts that he wanted to drag his whole palm down, followed by his tongue.

And then there was the memory of her thighs spread wide, tits bouncing as she jerked herself up and down right in front of his eyes, perfect lips parted as she ...

Glancing down, he realizes his dick is already hard in his shorts, precum beading and staining the fabric before he’s even set a finger on himself.

Sighing internally, he pulls himself out, resigned to the fact that he won’t be able to get any sleep tonight until he lets off some pressure. He is acutely aware that there’s only one woman on his mind as he strokes himself back and forth, over and over, to the rhythm of her body against his, her tits floating in and out of view. 

_What if I need someone to care for me?_

Her voice, the velvet of her throat, plays long and low on a loop in his mind. He tries with all his might to imagine it’s _her_ skin under his hand, and not his own dick. 

As he tugs himself faster and faster, he feels like he is rushing down a river at a speed he never imagined he’d go. Not in a million years did Clyde ever picture himself falling for Miss Kira, the stripper. 

Could he _really_ do this? Is this really what he wanted to do: catch feelings for a woman who could certainly have her pick of the hundreds of men shuffling in and out of the club every week? A woman at least ten years younger than him, who is so much more beautiful than he is handsome?

Before he falls over the edge, spilling into his own hand, his last lucid thought is that whether it’s right or wrong, good or bad, he’s already too far gone down this unexpected bend in the road not to see it all the way through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will post on November 19th, in honor of Adam Driver's birthday.
> 
> The idea of a lap dance being "churchy" is taken from [this Queer Majority essay](https://www.queermajority.com/essays-all/sex-in-the-champagne-room).
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/flybluejay_) ❤️
> 
> By [kyar_vantablack](https://twitter.com/kyar_vantablack), commissioned for me as a gift by some very dear friends.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He watches her, so few feet away from him and oh-so-lovely, poised as though to run — whether toward or away from him, he isn’t sure._
> 
> _“Missed me, did you?” She finally smiles, sending his head into a tailspin._
> 
>  _“Had to come back for you,” he forces out._
> 
> Wild horses couldn’t keep me away.

By [PandaCapuccino](https://twitter.com/pandacapuccino)

No me tengo prisa, yo me quiero dar el viaje

_I’m not in a rush, I want to take the scenic route_

Empezamos lento, despues salvaje

_Let’s start out slow, then we’ll be savages_

— [ “Despacito” (Luis Fonsi) ](https://open.spotify.com/track/6habFhsOp2NvshLv26DqMb)

[ Rey’s lingerie ](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/asos-c-1515771179.jpg?crop=1xw:1xh;center,top&resize=480:*)

[ Rey’s hair ](https://www.fabmood.com/inspiration/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/hair-color-ideas-31.jpg) \+ [ flowers ](https://www.weddingforward.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/wedding-hairstyles-with-flowers-half-up-half-down-with-small-flowers-sunkissedandmadeup-334x500.jpg)

* * *

_Friday night._

Rey had spent the whole week trying to pretend like she wasn’t looking forward to Friday — wasn’t looking forward to one particular person who she thought she might see on Friday. 

She’d made careful but not inappropriate eye contact with each new customer, wondering if the effect Clyde had had on her was something that just any stranger could fix. Out of fairness — or was it fear? — she’d tried chatting them up in the same way she might’ve tried with Clyde. She tried to channel her feelings for him into each new interaction with each new man to see if her heart gave the same jump that it had once she’d started talking with Clyde. 

Yet there was nothing: no spark, no mystery, none of the _honesty_ she had been able to have with Clyde. 

So it is with a heart both fearful and elated that Rey arrives for her shift on Friday knowing full well that there was no one in her world but Clyde Logan who could make her feel the way she felt. 

Rey tries to keep her hands from shaking as she unzips her bag and pulls out the surprise she had planned for Clyde since she told him she’d have it ready for him a week ago. 

“Jess?”

“Yeah, baby doll?”

“Do you mind giving me a hand with these?”

“What is it?” Jess turns to her and gasps. “Aw, Rey, you never wear those!”

Rey colors slightly. “I know.”

“The hell if I know why _not_. Last time you did you made more in that one night than I make in a week!”

“Well, it didn’t seem quite right.” 

“You mean makin’ all that money? Or you mean the way all the men was lookin’ at you?”

“Both, I suppose!” Rey stares at her friend with overexaggeratedly large eyes, laughing at the memory of the last night Jess had put in hair extensions for her. 

“Put these in, too.”

Miss Whitney’s voice cuts through the banter, ice cold in the suddenly-quiet dressing room. Rey turns to look at what Miss Whitney holds in her hands and immediately tenses. 

“What’re those for, Miss Whitney?” Jess’ voice seems innocent, but Rey catches the hint of tease in her words and casts a hostile glare in Jess’ direction.

“Put these in once you put in the extensions, Jess. Or better yet,” Miss Whitney’s voice softens imperceptibly. Rey’s heart only seems to beat faster. “I’ll put ‘em in myself.”

* * *

Clyde has never been one to shrink away from a decision once he’s made it. He might take his sweet time to make that decision, might have any number of questions along the way, but once he’s committed, he’s never tried to look for a way out or make excuses for himself.

So it is without hesitation that he slams the door of his car shut, slides the keys into the pocket of his jeans, and strides toward the entrance of the strip club without once taking his eyes off the front door. 

The door bangs open, and he gives his eyes a second to adjust to the extremely low lighting. 

Clyde was a man on a mission. He was here for one person, and one person only, and the first thing he had to do was find her. To make himself easier for her to spot, he even wore the same style of shirt as he had last Friday: he’d just made sure the shirt was the blue color instead of the gray so she wouldn’t think he didn’t do his laundry.

“Can I help you with somethin’?” A heavyset older woman with glasses stands at his elbow. Clyde looks down at her, confused.

“I’m Miss Whitney.” She smiles, eyes crinkling. Her voice barely cuts over the music. “I’m the house mama here. I take care of the girls.” 

“Ma’am.” Clyde keeps his eyes trained on the stage, thinking she might magically appear there, same as last time. “I’m just lookin’ for someone.” 

His heart sinks a little when he realizes he doesn’t know how these kinds of places work. He’d let his excitement overshadow his planning: a rare occurrence when it came to Clyde. 

_Is it part of the Logan family curse to be a damn fool when it comes to love?_ he wonders. 

“One of the girls? Did she tell you her name?” 

“Yes, ma’am.” Clyde had momentarily forgotten the lady was there. But he’d never forget _her_ name, not in a million years. “Miss Kira.” 

“Oh, of course! Kira ... I just seen her ‘round here. She ain’t busy. Let me send her over for you.” She gestures toward a nearby couch. “Why don’t you take a seat? Can I get you a drink while you wait?” 

Clyde names a drink as he takes his seat, still scanning the room as the woman leaves. She returns quickly with his dark ‘n’ stormy, then sets off again. 

This time, all of the girls seem to steer clear of his booth. As the minutes tick by, he strains his eyes in the darkness, trying and failing to catch a glimpse of _her._ He starts to wonder if she’s avoiding him, and if this is her way of leaving him behind like all the rest. 

He’s beginning to feel as dark and stormy as his drink. 

A shock of a memory returns: he remembers how he’d felt when he received the new prosthetic arm from DC and realized that Jimmy hadn’t kept his promise to get his old prosthetic arm back.

 _Except Jimmy_ did _get it back to you, didn’t he? He kept his promise, just like she’ll keep hers._

Clyde had spent all week puzzling and puzzling over what Miss Kira’s surprise could be. He’d tried to think through all the good things he’s done in his life that could possibly be allowing him to even hope for what he’s hoping for tonight. He only gave up when he realized all of the happiness he’d been feeling all week seemed to stem directly from Miss Kira, and Miss Kira alone: looking forward to seeing her, wondering what surprise she meant to give him, remembering her face, her body, her waist that could fit in his hand, bent over his knee, bent under his body as he …

Lord, he _had_ to stop thinking like that. Not when he had no idea if she felt the same way about him.

His mind flickers to thoughts that are decidedly less happy, the unhappiest of them all being that he couldn’t tell how she really felt about him. He doesn’t know if she makes every man feel this way, or if he is really the only one who is tortured by _her_ and the thought of her day and night. 

So when he lifts his eyes to see long brown hair cascading down a long bare torso, he tenses like he’s seen a ghost. 

Her lingerie is purple tonight, the cups of it hugging her breasts. The garter belt grips her slim waist, the clips leading his eyes down her long, graceful legs. Her hair is the same color as before, but seems to have grown many inches, till the bottom of it waves down to brush the top of her perfect, round ass. 

He slowly drags his gaze from _that,_ swallowing as he refocuses on the sheer length of beautiful hair, crowned with some sort of complicated braid that he knows he will never in a million years figure out. 

The whole breathtaking picture is completed by the delicate, tiny white flowers in her waves — _flowers,_ he repeats to himself dazedly — that seem to float down her back on the river of her hair. The white stands out even in the low lighting as she slowly turns underneath his gaze, giving him a full view of her many beautiful angles. She hasn’t met his eyes yet, seemingly biting back at a smile at his speechlessness. 

He stands up from his seat like he’s in some damn reenactment of _Gone with the Wind_ and she’s a proper Southern belle. She sure could grace any screen in the world, the way her gorgeous eyes lift up to his, looking for all the world as though she is … _nervous? Shy?_

But that can’t be possible, can it? She must do herself up like this every other day for every other man. What would make him different from anyone else she’s had? 

The thought of any other man getting to see her standing so prettily with all that _hair_ and all those _flowers_ is increasingly distressing. Before he knows it, he’s digging his nails into his palm with frustration. 

Before either of them have even made a move toward each other, he vows the sight of her is something that only _he_ will get to see tonight. 

He’ll gulp down ten mugs of straight black coffee if it means he can stay awake till the club closes, just so long as she gets to stay with him the rest of the night — just so long as she doesn’t waste another _second_ looking that pretty for anybody else. 

“Hello, Clyde.” The sound of her saying his name so quiet-like … well, he’d be lying if he said blood wasn’t rushing to his dick.

“Hey, Miss Kira.” His own voice is too soft, too. _Damn._

“I see you kept your promise to come back.” Her eyes are large upon him and he can hardly think straight.

“Well, you sure as hell kept yours,” he answers. His jaw is physically tight with the effort it’s taking not to look her up and down like some backwater hick. 

“Cat got your tongue?” The deep tone of her voice runs like a ribbon around her throat. 

He clears his throat roughly, wishing it were just as easy to tamp down a hard-on. “Um, yeah. Somethin’ like that.” He watches her, so few feet away from him and oh-so-lovely, poised as though to run — whether toward or away from him, he isn’t sure. 

“Missed me, did you?” She finally smiles, sending his head into a tailspin.

“Had to come back for you,” he forces out. 

_Wild horses couldn’t keep me away._

“Since you said,” he looks at her sternly, reminding her of the words he’d held on to all week, “you said you needed me.”

She smiles and starts saying something when a man walking behind her does a double take, twisting his head back to rake his eyes over her again. 

Miss Kira doesn’t see him because her eyes are trained on Clyde, but whatever she’s saying, Clyde doesn’t catch, because there’s something white-hot flashing behind his eyes and he can’t seem to _hear_ anything. 

He wraps two fingers around Miss Kira’s wrist and pulls till she slips onto his knee. “Come — _here,”_ he huffs at her, a beat too late — he’s already wrapped his left arm around her waist to angle her toward him and away from any passersby. 

She looks at him in shock, flowers swishing in her hair, then turns to look back in the same direction Clyde was looking. His hand itches to hold her chin and keep her from looking at anyone, any _thing_ that wasn’t him and him alone. 

Instead of manhandling her face, he resorts to saying: “Please don’t.”

It comes out a little more pitiful than he’d like, but either way Miss Kira seems to understand. Her eyes get soft around the edges and she lays one hand on his bicep, stroking up the muscle.

“I won’t, Clyde.”

Clyde tries to make his breathing even, but it’s hard when the smell of her perfume has suddenly filled his nostrils. 

He feels more than sees the way her ass is pushed up against his thigh, her muscles alternately tensing and relaxing. Her hands are once again on his arms, soothing him, exploring him, worshipping him. 

He feels like a king with this princess in his arms. So he curses himself like the damn fool he is when he can’t help making stupid observations that could very well take her away from him.

“My brother told me I’m not supposed to be allowed to touch you.”

Rey doesn’t look at him as she moves her hand behind his neck to brush the strands of hair there. 

“They’ve given me permission to touch you however you’d like,” she says quietly.

He thinks about that. “Is that what _you_ want?”

“That’s not quite how it works, Clyde.”

Clyde grits his jaw and stares down at her fiercely. But because of his damnable pride, he doesn’t ask her what he knows he should.

He doesn’t like not knowing how things work, doesn’t like not having all the facts, but he also believes, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that as long as Rey is guiding him, she’ll never let him swim out of his depth.

* * *

The moment Rey felt his hand surround her whole wrist and tug her to him, she _knew._

She felt it in the way his fingers immediately relaxed their hold on her, but didn’t let go. She sensed it in the way that he looked at her, jaw locked tight but somehow still gaping as his eyes traveled down the flowers in her hair. 

She _knew_ he had passed that long, dreadful week the same way she did: thinking back to that night when she was on his lap and his hands were on her thighs. 

She stares at him. Takes him in. This man who had been nothing to her, and has suddenly become everything. 

His hair is dark, wavy, and a little unkempt in the way it curls down to his shoulders. His eyebrows come together, dark and straight under a wrinkle in his forehead. Whether he knows it or not, he is flexing his hand tightly closed as he looks at her, mouth pursed and jaw working. She can tell he is deep in thought, and her heart rejoices to know that the object of such intense study is no one else but little old her.

Rey has never been more grateful for Miss Whitney than she is at that moment. 

Rey had thought the flowers might’ve been a symbol of something that hadn’t yet bloomed, but now she knows the truth: she is already in love with him. And she had been since she’d told him to put his hands on her.

So when she hears herself say, “That’s not quite how it works,” she feels her heart, newly in love, already begin to break. 

She wishes so terribly that she could be honest with him, but she doesn’t want him to stop coming because he doesn’t trust her. For now she’d rather get to be with him and see him whenever he comes, rather than tell him she’d been told to use her job to take advantage of him. She’s afraid of what he would say, what he would do if he were to find out. 

As though it will prevent further damage, she avoids the question that hasn’t been asked, the question that she knows she should answer — _How_ do _things work around here?_ — and instead asks too eagerly, “What do you want tonight, Clyde?” 

_Please, please want_ me.

“Don’t look like he’s keepin’ you busy, baby doll!”

Another man’s voice suddenly calls out to her, and Rey feels her whole body being lifted and set down on the table. She scrambles to her feet, balanced on her heels. 

_“You wanna say that again?”_

Clyde is standing less than a foot away from the shorter man, who shows no sign of backing down. He’s clearly drunk, a beer bottle dangling from his hands.

“Clyde, it’s alright —”

Clyde essentially cuts her off, so quickly does he speak after her: 

“I said, _what did you say to her?”_

“What the fuck is wrong with your hand —”

“Clyde, if you hurt him, they’ll make you leave right now.” Rey is breathless from rushing to stand by the two men. 

Clyde brings his fist down from where he has lifted it, but doesn’t step back from the other man. Rey suddenly realizes Clyde is too upset to speak.

She steps forward further, six-inch heels bringing her into the shorter man’s line of vision. 

“This man has already engaged me for the rest of the evening, so I’ll thank you to step away and leave us both alone.” She keeps her voice calm, looking at the other man with an even stare. 

The other man whines, “I ain’t done nothin’ —” 

“You heard what the lady said. She’s with me the rest of the night.” 

Rey glances at Clyde to see his right hand fisted at his side, eyes narrow and burning. She steps closer to Clyde and lets her leg slide against his, one hand on his chest to emphasize the point. 

Between Rey’s iciness and the aura of violence hanging around Clyde, the man is cowed enough to slink away, nursing the beer bottle as he goes. 

This time Rey is the one to grab Clyde’s wrist as she pulls him back to their table. “Come here,” she murmurs, pushing him gently to sit down and rearranging herself on his lap. 

She makes sure to push her ass against his crotch the way she can tell he likes. 

Some strands of hair have gotten in his face because of how quickly he’d stood up. “May I?” she asks lightly. His nostrils flare as he looks at her, like a bull halted in the middle of a charge. She takes his silence as consent and smooths the strands out of his eyes, stopping every so often to search his eyes to make sure he is calm.

“Thank you for defending me. We get a lot of customers who don’t know what the boundaries are. Think we’re all at their beck and call.” She sits back, fingers stilled over his heart. “There now. Now I can see your eyes.” 

_Lovely eyes that they are._

“Miss. Miss Kira.” He seems helpless. She can almost see the thoughts racing through his mind, so she isn’t _quite_ caught off-guard when he says: 

“How much do I gotta pay to get you alone?”

* * *

He hates what he’s about to say, hates that he doesn’t have any other way to ask it, but as long as this place is what is bringing them together, he knows he has to speak in the language of their surroundings. 

“How much do I gotta pay to get you alone?”

It’s not what he really wants, but as long as he’s not sure what _she_ wants he doesn’t want to lose her by trying to take her out of this little world they found each other in.

She looks him right in the eye, then begins speaking in a tone he notices as different. 

Her voice is still throaty, still sexy as hell, but now it is closed-off — professional. The only way he knows he asked the right question is the fact that her hands are still worrying two buttons on his shirt. 

“A lap dance with me is twenty dollars each, as you probably know. But there’s a special on now, seven for 125 dollars.”

He lets her finish, trying for her sake not to let on that he’s frustrated. Once she’s done speaking, he repeats as calmly as he can, “How much do I gotta pay to get you alone?” 

“The private rooms are five hundred dollars an hour before tips and bottle service,” she breathes. He can feel her ass tense up on his thigh. “No one’ll bother us in there.” 

He nods down at her. “That. That’s what I want.” 

Her eyes are large and bright upon him. “And how many hours do you want with me?”

“All of ‘em.” 

Her eyebrows raise even further. 

“How late you workin’ till?” 

“I usually stay till the club closes. So three a.m. By then I’ve usually hit my goal for the night.”

“And how much is that?”

“Well, on Fridays, I don’t leave till I’ve earned at least six hundred dollars — after I pay everyone out, that is.” 

“I’ll pay you three thousand for the fancy room. And you can leave whenever you want. You don’t have to stay with me an hour if you don’t want to.” 

He hates what he’s saying, hates the words coming out his mouth, because really he has no desire to talk with her about _how much time_ or _how much money_ or _what room would he like to see her in_. But he doesn’t want to lose her so soon, so he sticks to his guns, jaw clenching as he looks at her. “Will that cover all your tips?” 

“Clyde, that’s ... that’s more than I make in an entire weekend. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday combined.” Concern mixed with something else shines in her eyes. “Are you _quite_ sure?” 

“Respectfully, Miss Kira, I’ve never been more sure of anythin’ in my life.” He pushes his lips together, hard, to emphasize his certainty. 

Her eyes flicker down to his mouth before flicking back up to meet his gaze. 

A beat, and then — 

“Well, come on then!” 

She grabs his hand — _perfect, her hand is so perfect —_ and leads him to the stairs that go up to the red curtain. A light burns behind Clyde’s eyes as he follows her every move. 

She glances back once to make sure he’s still following her, even as his fingers are still locked around hers. Then she’s pulling him up, her heels making loud clomping noises on the steps that his boots echo. She pulls back the curtain in one movement and nods at the bouncer as Clyde ducks his head under. 

“Hey, Chewie.” 

The tall man — taller than Clyde — just nods at her as she weaves toward an open door. 

“Have a seat, please,” she says primly, long hair bouncing off her rear as she walks back to close the door. 

Clyde remains standing just inside the door. A luxurious queen bed dominates the space, two thick pillows laying on top of it. A small table sits next to the bed, with a pole and small wooden floor taking up the rest of the room.

Miss Kira leans against the door after closing it, one leg propped up and her lip between her teeth. “So, Clyde, you’ve got me all alone in here.” Her voice is exaggerated, dragging out the _all alone_. “What _ever_ shall we do?” 

Her steps are wandering as she strolls slowly past him toward the bed. One hand plays with the hair draped over her shoulder.

The sight of her strutting past him, lingerie and hips and hair and ass on full display in this room where they are _all alone,_ makes him feel reckless — unhinged. She is pulling out all the stops, and no mistake. Clyde wishes to heaven he could tell what’s real and what’s fake, but his body is more than halfway convinced _all_ of it is real. He is still tense with the effort of keeping himself in check.

She props up one of the pillows on the padded headboard and fluffs it, crooking a finger at him to come closer.

He moves to the head of the bed to join her, passing just a little too close before he stops, hovering above her. He smiles quietly to himself when he hears her breath hitch. 

He can’t help himself. He wants to tease her, but he also doesn’t know the rules of this place, and most importantly, he doesn’t know _her._ Doesn’t know whether she wants him to challenge her or whether she wants to be in control. 

He decides he’ll let her take the reins till he figures out how she wants him.

He just has one more question before he can fully relax. 

“Are we really alone?” 

She shakes her head, looking up at him as she replies, “Each room has a camera.” She makes a vague gesture toward the ceiling. Clyde doesn’t follow her hand, only looks intently at her as she speaks. “But it’s far away. The lighting in here is poor as well. And they don’t record audio either.” She looks back at him. “They only look to see if we’re doing something that can only be done … well, in a brothel.” 

He nods, satisfied, then takes a seat on the edge of the bed, back hunched forward.

Without another word, she swings up onto the pole. 

He watches attentively as she moves around and around, utterly graceful and propelled by nothing but her own momentum as her stomach clenches and her toes point. The bills in her garter flutter as she spins.

They continue like this for a while, Clyde content to watch her in silence, till she drops to the wood floor in a clatter.

“Would you like me to keep these on?” She gestures toward her heels.

“Whatever you like, Miss Kira.” 

She peels the rolls of money off her garter and places them on the bedside table. Then she looks him right in the eye as she bends over, nose by her knees as she reaches down to undo the straps. Her hair swings to one side of her body, drawing his eyes to the full curve of her ass and her long, long legs. 

His throat goes dry. 

Then he sees something that almost makes him choke. 

_Are those … freckles?_

His dick punches up and he shifts, hunched over further to hide the quickly rising bulge in his pants. 

“Ah, _much_ better.” She rolls her ankles, eyeing him. “Sit back,” she commands, pushing him to sit against the headboard. 

This time when she arranges herself on his lap, it's with her legs curled up into him and her shoulder on his chest. She reaches up to brush his hair away from his face, and that’s when Clyde sees something that previously escaped his notice. 

His nostrils flare. 

“What is _that?”_

Miss Kira leaves her hand in his hair as she follows his line of sight to the inside of her tricep, where, next to more distracting freckles, a tattoo of the letter R blooms inside a flower. 

“Oh, _bollocks,_ I forgot to put concealer on again.” 

Clyde’s nostrils continue to pulse as he stares at it. 

Something about the design, the placement of it makes him feel … dizzy. And warm. 

He realizes she’s looking at him with a curious stare. Immediately, he repeats, “What is it?”

“It’s the first letter of my name.” 

He waits.

“My name … my name is Rhiannon. But no one calls me that.” Her fingers go back to stroking his hair.

He waits some more, then: “Well. What _do_ they call you?”

Her fingers stop moving again. Her eyes are soft upon him as she murmurs, “Rey.” 

“Rey,” he repeats slowly. His eyes move back to the tattoo that she now deliberately keeps it in front of his gaze, hand stilled across his face. 

_Perfect girl. Perfect name. Perfect girl._

She notices his stare and looks at him till he looks back at her. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t,” he promises solemnly. For a moment there is no sound in the room except the sounds of their breathing. His eyes are still trained on the ink on her arm, the way the flower spreads across her whole muscle, touching … 

“Can I touch you?” he blurts out. 

Internally, he berates himself, but he doesn’t try to take the words back. 

“Fuck, darling,” she says prettily. The swear word falls from her lips as natural as breathing, and her teeth shimmer as she smiles again. Clyde is hypnotized. “Of course you can touch me. Where would you like to touch me first?” 

She keeps saying _touch me_ and it’s driving him out of his mind. 

_“Please.”_ His eyes are desperate, drilled into the tattoo on her arm like a drumbeat on his heart. 

“Go ahead, lo—” She gasps as his nose connects with her arm. 

He holds himself there for a moment, then slowly rubs over her ink with the bridge of his nose till he drags his lips to cover the R. 

She is completely still under him. He keeps his lips there, breathing in her scent, before pulling back quickly.

“Where el-where else can I touch you?” he stutters, voice slightly rougher than before. 

It takes her only a second to regain her composure before she places her wrist before his mouth, murmuring, “Here.” 

He again places his nose on the spot first, rubbing it gently before sliding his lips up to kiss her wrist. 

As he moves, his eyes never leave hers. 

He knows he must look like a man starved, the way he is pleading with her with just his eyes. He hopes his mustache isn’t too rough on her skin.

She puts a hand on her neck, just under her jaw. “And here.” 

He presses his nose and then lips against her fingers, pinning her hand against her neck as he kisses there. Her perfume floods his nostrils. “Mmph,” he offers, in what he hopes is an appreciative tone. 

_“Hmm,”_ she hums in reply. “And — here.” Her hand moves to her collarbone, letting it linger as he presses his face against her fingers there.

He can’t help but open his mouth a tiny bit to let his teeth graze her fingers before pulling away. 

“Where … where else?” he murmurs, only a little breathless. 

He still hasn’t touched her with anything besides his mouth and nose, but his prosthetic and human fists are hopelessly tangled in the sheets, ready to tear the fabric. He looks up to see her eyes half-lidded and dark as molasses. 

“Mmm,” she lets slip. _“Here.”_

And then she places three fingers on her lips.

He brings his nose to the fingers on her lips and _pushes._ Her lips part, and her teeth graze the very tip of his nose. 

Then she bites, the tiniest clamp, and he is dragging her open mouth down till their lips … _meet_.

It’s like a spark has caught fire, the tallest tree felled by the heat between them as she takes his lip in hers. She tugs, and he leans. She nips, and he huffs. She sighs, and he clenches his hand in the sheets. 

Her head is angled down over his, torso rearing up against his chest as she arches toward him. Hair and flowers cover him like a blessing as he’s surrounded by her scent. He’s struggling not to let his eyes roll back in his head so he can keep watching her trying to take him over. 

The sight is nothing less than majestic. 

She’s pushing his wrists down with her hands, her fingers twined insistently between his, and the external restraint placed on him by someone other than himself unlocks something deep inside. He loosens his jaw to take her bottom lip in, pulling and sucking even as her mouth fights to wrap back around his. 

One of the straps of her lingerie top has fallen off her shoulder, and he thinks he groans her real name as they push against each other, but he isn’t sure she hears him through the deep rumbling noise that’s suddenly started up.

“Clyde.” Her lips are suddenly too far from his. He leans forward, searching with his eyes half-closed. 

The rumbling gets louder.

 _“Clyde.”_

He opens his eyes all the way.

“Clyde, you’re growl—”

 _“Hour’s up!”_ Their heads both swivel to the door. A loud knocking, then someone unlocks the door, opens it, and walks away without looking in. 

“Chewie,” Rey observes. Her eyes are already back on Clyde. 

“Clyde. Did you realize you were _growling?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will post on November 21st.
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/flybluejay_)! ❤️


	4. Chapter 4

You wear your heart on your sleeve

I wear my blood on my tie

But it's only love underneath this disguise

— [ “Collide” (James Bay) ](https://open.spotify.com/track/4OF1jvruJaAzVpHjZlEsxj)

* * *

Clyde has the grace to be utterly sheepish, stuttering adorably, “I didn’t — I don’t —”

Even with his hair still perfectly in place, he manages to look as though they’d done much more than kiss. His eyes are sleepy, the lids lowered, and his mouth hanging open as though he can’t get enough air. 

“I’m sorry, Miss — Rey.” 

“Sorry’s right,” she quips, smiling broadly. “I thought you were about to eat me alive.” 

His silence at that is telling. Even more telling is the way his eyes darken, black almost to the edges as he stares at her without saying a word.

_A minute ago his forehead was touching hers._

_A minute ago he had taken her lips between his._

_A minute ago they were fighting for control of each other._

She doesn’t fail to notice the dampness creeping between her thighs. 

If she were to swipe a finger through she knows she’d come up wet. 

It was extremely frowned upon to kiss customers. Rey had known that the minute she lifted her wrist to Clyde’s lips. She didn’t know who was watching the cameras tonight, but she knew the only reason no one had barged in earlier was because somewhere, Miss Whitney was allowing it to happen. She twisted in Clyde’s lap, suddenly noticing how warm his body heat was. 

“It’s one a.m.,” she says quietly. 

“Time to head home,” he confirms for her.

“Well, besides you, there’s nothing else keeping me here.” 

He doesn’t respond to that either, still watching her with those dark eyes. 

She doesn’t dare ask herself how or why, but somehow she knows there are questions he isn’t asking — and she knows she has some of the answers. “You know, most of the time when men buy a private room, all they want to do is talk. What we did tonight, it was …” She doesn’t finish the thought, looking at him seriously instead. “If … _when_ you come back, I’d love to talk to you. Talk to you _more,_ that is.” 

“I’ll come back as often as you want me back.” 

She’s surprised at how relieved his words make her. 

“Brilliant. Lovely. Wonderful.” She knows her smile must be overly wide, but she can’t be bothered to care.

He gives her a little smile of his own, a tilting of the corner of his mouth that makes her feel like _his_ smile is the bigger one. 

“When?” he says.

“Mmm?”

“When should I come back?”

“I’ll be in next Friday.” He’s offered her more than enough money to get through the week on his payment alone — more than she would have made if she’d worked the whole weekend. 

Her only hesitation is that next Friday sounds like such a long time from now, and she doesn’t want that to keep him from coming. 

Nor does she want him to come on a day when she isn’t working and end up with someone else on his lap. 

She worries her lip as she adds, “Can you wait till then?” 

He just looks at her with those innocent eyes, and she knows without words that he would wait years if she’d asked him to. “What time?”

“I’ll be here at eleven. Eleven p.m.,” she clarifies.

“Then that’s when I’ll be here, too.”

With every word he says, she becomes more and more sure that it’s his straightforwardness that keeps the smile on her face. 

There’s no one else she can think of who she’d trust more to tell her the truth every time. 

She is all too reminded of that fact when Miss Whitney corners her in the dressing room. After they’d gone down the stairs, fingers still desperately intertwined, and after Clyde had placed the money in her hands, Rey had pushed a flower back at him. She’d told him to keep it and promised no one would notice if it was missing. 

And Rey was right: Miss Whitney didn’t notice it was gone. She’d been too busy noticing too many other things.

“I saw you with him in the private room, Rey. You have him hooked. Wrapped around your finger.” 

The words are exactly what Rey wants to hear … and yet nothing at all like what she wants to hear. 

The flowers tangle in the extensions as she pulls the stems out.

“You were watching?” Rey had figured Miss Whitney would be watching somehow, but she still can’t help the tinge of anger piercing through her voice. 

Miss Whitney answers the question without answering the question. “That man could make you a lot of money.” She leans forward, bumping slightly into Rey as the pile of flowers slowly grows on the vanity table. “Did you ask him about the inheritance?”

“I didn’t — what inheritance? No, I didn’t.” Rey turns to Miss Whitney. “Did it look like I did when you were watching us?” 

Rey knows she’s gone a step too far with the sarcasm, but the way Miss Whitney is talking about Clyde sets her on edge far too quickly.

“You _know_ why they come here, Kira.” Miss Whitney, cruelly, cuts straight to the chase. “They don’t come here to find wives, or girlfriends, or even friends. They come here to _use you_ to pretend they have that. Then they go home, to their real lives, and forget all about you.” 

Miss Whitney picks up the flowers strewn on the table, pulling the last two out of Rey’s hair as she speaks. 

“Have you even asked if he’s married? Or if he’s seein’ someone?” 

Rey just stares at her in the mirror, back ramrod straight. 

“Don’t make this more than it is, Miss Kira. Don’t make this about you.” Miss Whitney’s voice is barbed. “What it is is a fantasy, and that’s all it should be — for you, and for him.” 

At home, in front of her own mirror, Rey is so angry that she cries: slow, short tears that don’t make a sound. She is silent, gathering her thoughts as the wetness gathers at her chin. 

Miss Whitney wasn’t wrong. When Rey had begun stripping, it had all been for herself. Not only was the money good if you were a hard worker — and oh, how _desperately_ she had needed money in those early years on her own — but the work made her feel stronger: more capable, more confident, more self-reliant. Her take was as much as she was willing to work to make. She liked being dependent on herself, liked the thought that she could use nothing more than her body and her own wits to keep herself alive, and she didn’t have to rely on a traditional job to do it.

Yes, Rey had liked it all — till now. She didn’t realize she had been relying on the idea of “selling a fantasy” to prop her up and protect her from forming any real attachments. 

Miss Whitney may have been right to diagnose that Rey _had_ made stripping all about her … but no longer.

Rey had been compelled to think differently, for one very important reason: Clyde Logan was no fantasy. He was real: as real as the dirt on Rey’s floor, as real as the metal of Clyde’s prosthetic arm.

As real as her fingers between his, twisted in the sheets. 

The memories of earlier that night cast a soft shadow that lit Rey’s face in the early morning light. It was as though she was seeing her own face in the mirror for the first time. 

_No. None of it was a fantasy._

“That’s _not_ what you are, Clyde Logan. Not to me.”

* * *

_Swish. Ching. Snap. Rustle._

Clyde hated those sounds of payment the very first time he’d heard them at the club, let alone the second time. How did anyone think he could pay for a kiss from a girl like Rey like it had a price?

Hell, if all he’d gotten out of the deal was a flower smelling like her perfume, he’d take it. 

He stares at the newest addition to his bathroom counter. The petals are white, delicate, and look completely out of place where he’s set it down next to his razor and toothpaste.

But it hadn’t looked out of place when he was getting himself off last night, eyes fixed on the white with the lights turned out, mind straining to imagine it is Kira — _Rey_ — spread beneath him on all fours, her hair with the flower in it, as he punches into her. Her hair would shift over her back with each push, till her bare skin was fully exposed and he could spread his hand over her naked spine. 

Or maybe he’d take her on her back as she looked up at him, eyes wide, flower behind her ear as he’d move over and over her. He remembers the feeling of her skin against his lips, and in his mind, he tilts his head down just enough, still thrusting, so she can take his nose between her teeth again and nip ... 

Clyde’s hand never slowed down or sped up as he pushed into himself. He groaned like a dying animal when he came, surging over the toilet with the flower atop it. As he watched his cum spurt out of him, a wave of helplessness shot through him, even as his mind wrapped more and more firmly around Rey with every passing second: her voice, her body, her eyes, her kiss.

At first glance, it seems like he and Rey don’t match each other. Their bodies, their voices, their clothes are all so different from each other. Yet when they are together, it’s like they are two halves of a whole. 

In those moments her voice becomes his only balm — her skin, the thing that gives him breath: her body, his salvation. 

As he stares at himself in the mirror, breathing hard and face flushed as he tries to come down from the fantasy, he knows without knowing that just now, his dick had itched to stretch within the bounds of her pussy. It felt like a reverse sort of emptiness, to come without being inside her, to hit his climax without her face below him. He wants — needs — to stroke her into ecstasy, to know _he_ is the cause of anything good that happens to her.

He wants to fully spear her and balance the weight of her on his cock like a god.

He can hardly bear the thought of anyone else being as perfect for her as he somehow knows he is.

So now, this morning, like the lovesick fool he is, he carries the flower with him to the kitchen, wondering if there is somewhere he can set it that would serve as a place of honor. 

It is in that position that Jimmy finds him when his brother waltzes through the front door. He pauses at the sight of Clyde, flower blooming from his prosthetic hand. 

“Where’d you get that?” Jimmy immediately starts. 

“Don’t you know how to knock?” Clyde doesn’t try to hide his irritation, or the flower.

“Did you go back and see Miss Kira?’

Clyde prides himself on the fact he and his brother are mighty good at getting to the point. No one ever pulls the wool over their eyes. Yet his and Jimmy’s no-bullshit honesty can sometimes prove to be a curse — as in this particular instance.

When Clyde doesn’t answer, Jimmy gestures at the flower. “That hers?”

Clyde just looks at him.

Jimmy eyes him from below the brim of his hat. “We need to talk.” He gestures to the kitchen table before them. “You got a sec?”

Clyde watches Jimmy sit down before taking his own seat. He positions the flower on the table beneath his right hand as though to keep it from being grabbed.

“Couple of the guys told me you traded your shift this Friday to work days,” Jimmy starts.

“So?”

“And Earl said you traded your shift last Friday to get off early, too,” Jimmy presses.

“So?”

“So you been goin’ back to the club to see that girl?”

“She _has_ a name,” Clyde snaps back. “And so what if I have?” he throws out, by way of an answer.

“Alright, alright! Don’t get your panties in a twist.” Jimmy sniffs. “I took you there first, didn’t I? Got you introduced to her and everything.”

“And I’m grateful,” Clyde admits grumpily, sounding not at all grateful. 

“Well, alright then.” Jimmy settles back in his seat. “How much all did you spend?”

Clyde takes a breath in through his nose before answering. “Three thousand.”

“Three thous—” Clyde cuts him off with a glare. Jimmy’s face is dumbfounded. “Please tell me you got something real good out of it for all that money.” 

Jimmy waits.

“I did,” Clyde confirms. “She kissed me.” He hopes his brother has enough good sense to see the obvious benefits of this. 

But unsurprisingly, Jimmy does not see things the way Clyde does. “Three thousand dollars and all you got was a _kiss?_ Clyde, I — _”_

Another glimpse at Clyde’s face convinces Jimmy not to finish his thought.

“Hey, well ... What you do when you go back there is your business. And I ain’t here to get in your business.” He leans forward. “But I gotta tell you, them stripper girls … they ain’t there to be your girlfriend. For all you know, she could already have a boyfriend, or a husband, or somebody else in her life.”

Clyde stiffens. Bunch of good all his thinking had done him — not once had he ever thought of that.

“They’re there for the money, just like any old job. So I don’t want you gettin’ confused when she treats you nice and tells you how good you look, tells you she cares about you. Now you _are_ a handsome son of a gun, don’t get me wrong. If that girl has any kind of eyes, she can see that.” Jimmy angles his head to make Clyde look him in the eye. “I just don’t want you thinkin’ she means any of it.” 

Jimmy waits, apparently done. 

“What if you’re wrong?” Clyde says, staring down at the table. His hand is steady over the flower.

“How you figure?”

“Well. What if she _does_ mean it?”

“See, Clyde, this is exactly what I’m talkin’ about!” Jimmy stands in his seat. “She could be tellin’ you some bullshit about how she wants to see you again, and you’re just swallowin’ it like a goddamn fool just because it’s been so long since —”

“I’m just sayin’.” Clyde is standing too, eyebrows drawn together in a glare as he avoids Jimmy’s eyes. “How would you know if she means it or not? Aren’t _I_ supposed to be the one to decide that?” 

Jimmy looks at him closely, then finally holds up his hands. “Yes. Yes, you are. ‘Course you are. But I just had to let you know: it could all be a lie. Just a show put on for you.” 

What his brother is asking him to believe is too far outside the realm of possibility for Clyde to take it seriously. 

The only thing that convinces him something might be off is the fact that Jimmy is so dead set on having this conversation with him. 

But Clyde can’t make any decisions about Rey without talking to Rey first. That wouldn’t be fair to Rey, and it wouldn’t be fair to the way he knows he feels about her.

“I just don’t think it’s all a show,” Clyde finally says flatly. It hurts him to have to say it out loud in such a baldfaced way.

Jimmy sighs heavily, understanding that Clyde is frustrated. “You know I trust you. I always have.” 

Clyde makes eye contact with Jimmy, an unspoken _thank you_ hanging in the air. 

Jimmy accepts his thanks without moving a muscle, then makes toward the door. “I better get goin’ — let you find somewhere to put that.” He gestures with his hat in his hand toward the flower Clyde is holding.

“Oh, and Clyde?”

Clyde stops moving, but doesn’t turn back around. 

“Mellie and I … I mean …” Jimmy rubs the back of his neck. “Well, I’m real happy for you.”

Clyde watches the front door thud shut before running water into a mug. He places the flower in the mug, but the whole thing doesn’t look quite right on the kitchen table. Once he moves it to the windowsill next to his books, he smiles quietly to himself at how at-home the flower looks there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will post November 23rd. I'll be posting a sneak peek on my [Twitter](https://twitter.com/flybluejay_) tomorrow if you're not already following me ❤️ 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _She rolls her torso in his face as she lifts off his crotch. It takes her more effort than she’d like to admit to look down at him._
> 
> _“Wh … what are you doin’?” His eyelids are lowered to half-mast, and internally, Rey crows at the sight._
> 
> You deserve full service, _she thought to herself. As soon as she’d seen that he had come back for her again, she knows she wants to show him just how much he really deserves._

Art by [Clara Gemm](https://twitter.com/ClaraGemm)

When you move, I can recall something that’s gone from me

When you move, I can recall something so flawed and free 

— [“Movement” (Hozier)](https://open.spotify.com/track/1djzKW3eYLyzjjHXazEWWh)

[ Rey’s lingerie and necklace ](https://i.etsystatic.com/21100281/d/il/d6ccba/2392071111/il_340x270.2392071111_m4lr.jpg?version=1)

* * *

_Friday night._

“Jess, does this look — how does this —” Rey twists and turns in the dressing room mirror, pink bows floating as she moves. 

“Lemme see.” Jess shoves the eyeliner brush between her teeth before stepping back to get a better look. “Is that new?”

Rey ignores her as she adjusts the garter around her waist. “These ruffles feel odd …”

She’s interrupted when Jess squeals. “It’s _new,_ oh my _god!_ Oh my god, you bought an outfit because of _him —”_

“Jess, hush, or someone will hear you.” Jess’ hands are clawing at the air, and Rey grabs at them both. “Miss Whitney can’t know.”

“Um, Rey.” Jess rolls her eyes. “Miss Whitney already knows.” 

“She knows that he’s exclusively my customer. But she doesn’t know,” Rey stares Jess dead in the eye, “she doesn’t know how I _feel_ about him.”

Jess’ eyes go wide, and Rey keeps a death grip on her arm to force her not to squeal. _“Rey!”_

“I’ve told you: not a word.” Rey lets her go and eyes herself in the mirror one more time. “It’s just so … frilly.” She keeps her voice light. 

Jess is still staring at her, hand on her hip. “Rey,” she says disbelievingly. 

“Hmm?” Rey turns to her with an all-too-innocent look on her face, eyebrows raised. Jess just stares back. 

Rey sighs, stretching her arms out toward the other girl. She gives in. “Do my eye makeup for me?”

As Jess brushes shadow onto her lids with a practiced hand, Rey lets her shoulders drop. Having her eyes closed makes it easier to say these things to someone else. “I can’t describe it, but I keep waiting for something he says, or does, or even something he _wears_ to turn me off from him — to remind me that I’m just at a job, that he’s just buying and I’m just selling.” She purses her lips at how inappropriate that thought sounds when it comes to Clyde. “But that feeling that flips the switch and helps me focus on work? It never comes.” 

She quickly opens her eyes as Jess dabs the brush into a different pot of eyeshadow, then closes them again. 

“And so I keep forgetting he’s a customer, and all I keep thinking is that he’s a proper _man.”_

Rey feels the brush stop moving over her eyelid. 

After a few seconds, Jess resumes brushing, spreading the color over her lid. “He _is_ a man, Rey.” 

“But that’s just it. None of the rest of them have been. At least, not to me.” 

Jess snorts. “You know, I think you might be right about that? Hold still.” 

Rey feels the thinner, wetter brush of eyeliner and immediately adjusts her breathing to stay as steady as possible.

“What do y’all even talk about?” Jess continues.

“We haven’t talked much, actually.” Rey waits till she feels the liner brush leave her eye to murmur: “Mostly just kissed.”

She can’t help but grin at Jess’ gasp. “You _kissed_ him?” Rey just smiles as she watches the emotions sweep over Jess’ face. “Rey! Oh my god … you _did!”_

Rey laughs, pure relief washing over her. “I _did!_ I did.” 

She didn’t realize she’d been bracing herself for disapproval, and was happy that her friend seemed like she wanted to celebrate instead. _Being in love with someone_ is _supposed_ _to be a happy thing, isn’t it?_

Rey smiles back at Jess, cheeks and wide teeth splitting her face open.

“Oh, Rey …” Jess is beaming back at her until she thinks of something. “And you wanted to, right? He didn’t force you or nothin’?”

Impossibly, Rey’s smile gets wider at the memory of just how _willing_ she’d been that night. “What do you think?” she responds cheekily, swiping the eyeliner back from Jess’ hand. 

Rey turns back to face herself in the mirror, balancing her hand as she touches up the line. “He was a gentleman. Asked if he could touch me, and even then he kept himself very well restrained.” 

_Of sorts._

She had felt like his body had overwhelmed hers, but he hadn’t even put his hands on her. Rey shudders as she remembers his self-control: her hands resting gently on his wrists as he directed all the force of his passion into the sheets in his fists. When they left the room, the sheets had been hopelessly wrinkled, and Rey thought she had even seen a tear underneath where they had been sitting. 

He had ripped the sheets in two before he would put his hands on her body. 

Rey thought of the low rumble of him quietly growling into her mouth as she took his lip between her teeth. She didn’t know whether to feel grateful he had restrained himself, upset that he hadn’t tried to do more, or just hopelessly turned on that such a man would want her so badly. 

Right now she thinks the latter feeling may outweigh the other two. She feels arousal start to pool in her cunt. 

“You’re gettin’ hot just rememberin’, aren’t you?” Jess’ smile is entirely too smug.

“Oh, bugger off, why don’t you?” 

Rey makes to throw the eyeliner bottle at Jess and the two girls crack up, laughing together.

“Well, I’m so happy for you, baby doll.” Jess sits down next to her. Their bare shoulders touch as Jess adjusts her own lingerie strap. “And I promise I won’t tell anyone else. I’d hate to see you have to leave.”

Rey goes still at the reminder. Any other girls who hear about Rey’s _special treatment_ could very well come after her for making the rest of them seem like goody two-shoes. “Thank you, love.” 

Jess continues. “Ever since you came out here from England and started workin’ here, we been makin’ good money. And I’m so glad we became friends ‘cause of this place. You’re brave, you’re strong, and you ain’t afraid of carin’ for other people.” 

For some reason, Jess’ voice makes Rey’s heart ache. She can only nod at the other girl as tears gather behind her eyes.

Jess looks like she wants to say more, but instead she just stands again and moves to pull something out of her own bag. “I think you should wear this tonight. I brought it for me, but I don’t think I’m gonna use it.” 

She lifts a thin necklace with a single pearl in her hand. “I think it’s just the thing to bring your outfit together. Draws the eye to all the right places,” she says knowingly.

In silent gratitude, Rey lets Jess fasten the necklace around her. Jess arranges the pearl to land below her collarbone before giving Rey an approving once-over. “Well, don’t you just look like a _princess?”_ she gushes. 

Rey goes to stand by Jess. The two girls look at each other in the mirror. “It’s just that pink has never been my color,” Rey explains. “And these ruffles —”

Jess interrupts her. “I’m gonna stop you right there. You look nothin’ but drop-dead gorgeous in that thing. Hell, I’d give you all the money in my wallet, if I had any money.” 

Jess winks at her, and Rey makes the decision then and there to let her friend’s encouragement to lighten her heart.

* * *

When Clyde enters the club, Rey is on the pole. 

The flower may have started drooping a bit since he’s seen her last, but his desire and affection for Rey have dug roots deep into Clyde and dropped anchor in his heart. He feels both more exposed and more grounded than ever — a rock in a storm, able to be dislodged in an instant only by _her._

She’s wearing pink tonight, a frilly, fluffy nothing that looks like he’d be able to see her tits if he flipped up the fabric covering them. A single pearl dangles tantalizingly around her neck. The garter belt makes it look like she’s wearing a tiny pink skirt that ends right above her ass cheeks. 

Clyde feels drool starting to pool in his mouth and slurps it up, looking around in case someone might’ve noticed.

He’s still getting used to the way he gets warm when he sees her, the way he completely forgets where he is and what he’s doing. He’s not used to the way his heart rate picks up as soon as he even thinks about talking to her again. 

He’s not used to not knowing himself — not used to finding out so many things about himself just by virtue of being within a certain distance of another person. 

Rey suddenly prances to the edge of the stage to let someone stuff bills into her garter. She doesn’t spend more than half a second bent next to the man, but it’s enough to make Clyde want to drag her off the stage and throw her over his shoulder.

He’s never felt so out of control of his own body ... not since the day his arm was taken out. 

She’s far away from the other man now, and he ignores the urge to try to break something, focusing instead on what Rey is doing on the pole.

It’s a different routine than the one she did when he first saw her, but her every move has the same effect on him as it did the first time. His reactions are perhaps even stronger from the memory of their bodies together.

He’s replayed that night enough times over the past week — in his bedroom, in his bathroom, on his back, bent over the toilet — for him to remember the exact feel of every part of her that touched him.

She wraps her thigh around the pole, and Clyde remembers how her thigh muscles pushed against his when she sat him on the bed. 

She moves a finger between her lips, and Clyde feels himself get hard remembering her teeth biting down on his lip. 

She kneels, gripping the pole, and her ass cheeks quiver so prettily like they always do when she moves in her heels. Clyde feels his eyes glaze over envisioning his hands on her legs as she bounced her ass in his face that very first night they met. 

He blinks to bring himself out of his thoughts. If he didn’t quit right now, he’d have to jerk off in the bathroom real soon, and he’d probably have to join the four other bastards in there doing the same thing … And if he did that, someone else might snatch Rey up before Clyde could stake his claim for the whole night as he’d planned to. 

He stalks to the stage, stopping at the very edge of the crowd while making sure to stand in enough light for her to see him. 

He can tell the moment she does. Her eyes widen, then break into a smile. With her eye makeup done just so, and the lipstick colors she chooses to wear, her little ass and legs out for all the world to see, everything she does seems so … sexy. Entrancing. 

_Delicious._

When the music stops, she turns away from the pole and starts gathering the bills that were dropped for her on the stage. By the time Clyde makes his way through the crowd, she’s almost done piling her cash. He sets a roll of bills on the stage that is thicker and taller than everything she holds in her hands. 

She looks up and smiles that dazzling smile when she realizes it’s him.

“Hey, Miss Kira,” he says, more breathlessly than he’d practiced. He doesn’t use her real name in case anyone else is listening. 

“Hey, Mr. Logan.” She mimics his formality, grinning from ear to ear. She doesn’t make a move to touch the money he’s given her. 

She must be in a good mood if she’s teasing him already, and _damn,_ does he like her to tease him. Despite this, he’s too nervous to smile, so he just waits for her to tell him what he’s going to do next. 

As long as he is anywhere in the same room as her, he’ll wait like a dog for her to tell him what to do.

Her hand on his arm brings him back to the present. “Shall we get out of here, then?” Her accent gives the words a funny intonation, and his heart skips a beat. 

“Yeah, we should,” he says simply. He feels _so_ happy. 

“Help me down?” 

With one hand full of bills, she extends an arm for him to balance her so she can hop down. 

For reasons he doesn’t fully understand, Clyde skips straight to putting both hands on her waist, lifting her completely. 

“Oh!” she yelps. She laughs at her own surprise, eyes shining as she gazes up at him. 

_You are the sweetest thing, baby girl._

Then, another thought — one that doesn’t completely surprise him, if he’s being honest.

_I’d let them take out my arm again if it meant I could have you._

Without another word, she takes his hand and starts pulling them away from the stage. She looks back, confused, when he doesn’t move to follow her.

He hesitates, then says roughly, “Your money.” His voice is low and quiet — strained.

The little pile of bills he gave her sits forgotten on the stage.

A momentary cloud seems to pass over her face. She rolls her lips for a beat before slowly moving back to add it to the stack in her hand. 

She seems to move reluctantly, begrudgingly, as though it’s something she doesn’t want to do. Clyde notices her hesitation, but doesn’t comment. 

He does, however, let hope build in his chest. 

In silent agreement, she leads him to the staircase for the private rooms. Neither of them says a word to each other, both of them having been of the same mind since they locked eyes on each other.

Clyde ascends as though to heaven. He is floating on the clouds of her perfume and her brilliant smile shining only for him, her six-inch heels making her ass sway before him as she leads him up the stairs. 

He passes through the curtain as one blessed, her low “Hello, Chewie” reaching his ears as though in a dream. 

And finally, finally, when the door closes and he’s been sat gently on the bed, Clyde receives on his lap his very own personal angel.

* * *

Rey presses play on the built-in stereo unit and listens to the electronic rhythm as she stares down at Clyde. He looks soft as a puppy and just as shy, staring up at her and vibrating slightly as she slowly lowers herself onto his legs.

She puts gentle pressure on his chest until he sits back, then she rolls her hips against him as she pulls one of her straps off her shoulder. She watches a vein in his neck jut out forcefully as she drags the other strap down.

The lingerie top stays on, clasp still intact around her torso, but it slides a little bit down her front, as she’d known it would. The straps hang loose on her upper arms as she places a hand on either side of his head. 

His eyes, already dark with need, darken even further.

He hadn’t asked for a lap dance, but she’d felt so much joy upon seeing him, she was ready to give him things he didn’t even know to ask for. 

She bounces her ass lightly onto his crotch once, then twice, settling into a rhythm that matches the song she’s chosen. She is intentionally grazing where she thinks his cock is, and is immediately rewarded with the feeling of the bulge under her rear growing distinctly larger with each bounce. 

Clyde is mute, jaw clenched like a hurricane. She keeps bouncing, barely touching his cock each time as she coaxes it bigger and bigger. 

She notices with private pleasure that his eyes are starting to roll back in his head. 

She hasn’t wanted to admit it to herself for awhile, but seeing him before her in such a state helps her finally tell herself the truth: this gigantic, powerful man is completely wrapped around her finger. 

She feels crazed with the desire to see just how far she can push him. She’s done it before with other men, at their request. But Clyde has asked for so little from her that it makes her want to give him everything.

This time when she bounces on his cock, she puts a little more pressure, leaning further forward to let her breasts bump his chest. 

Below her, Clyde lets out a soft _“Uhhh.”_

Then, more urgently: _“Rey.”_

“Yes, darling?” She rolls her torso in his face as she lifts off his crotch. It takes her more effort than she’d like to admit to look down at him. 

“Wh … what are you doin’?” His eyelids are lowered to half-mast, and internally, Rey crows at the sight. 

_You deserve full service,_ she thought to herself. As soon as she’d seen that he had come back for her again, she knows she wants to show him just _how much_ he really deserves.

To prove her point, she answers his question with something he once asked her: “Can I touch you, Clyde?” 

_Please,_ she thinks, a bit desperately.

He seems to need no persuading, but just to sway him beyond a shadow of a doubt, she pushes her ass back into his crotch. 

_“Uhhh …”_ He jerks forward involuntarily, lost to the feeling she’s given him. 

Rey rejoices in the fact that he is _this_ gone and they have barely done anything. He feels incredibly large under her, and he’s growing larger every second.

“Can I touch you, please?” she repeats. “Tell me, darling.” Now she is rubbing incessantly on his cock, still in his pants, as she grinds over and over against the swell she feels there. She’s addicted to the feeling, so much so that she decides to do something she has never done before: she lets loose a real sigh of her own to let him know she’s right there with him.

He hears her and immediately groans, as though he somehow knows she’d just given him a real piece of _her._

_“Yes,_ baby girl — please, _lord —”_

_Baby girl._

The endearment lights her on fire, and she grabs his prosthetic hand and guides it to the clasp of her bra, resting it there. She undoes the clasp with her own fingers, and the front of her lingerie drops down her body, revealing her breasts.

His eyes widen and dart all over her, seemingly trying to commit her entire upper half to memory. 

Behind her back, she places the lingerie into his metal hand, a now-useless piece of fabric. He doesn’t move, so she moves for him, pulling his arm back down to the sheets so that the lingerie top is fully off her body and on the bed. She continues moving up and down in front of him, topless like she’s been in front of so many other men.

But not in front of any man like Clyde.

“Where else can I touch you, baby?” She’s thought every day about his words from their last time together, and she can’t help teasing him the way he teased her so unexpectedly the last time.

“Wherever — you want _— darlin’_ —” His words are slurred as she continues rolling on him. His cock has jutted up so far that she is hovering much higher above him than she was before.

Before either of them can blink, she places her hand on the back of his head and guides her right nipple into his mouth. 

When she pushes it in, both of their heads tilt back, overwhelmed. His hands move instinctively to her waist and his tongue flicks over her, seemingly on accident. At that, she lets out a small cry. Meanwhile, he is huffing like a stallion, eyes ferocious as he stares up at her.

Jess was right. Rey _does_ feel like a princess, mounted atop this man with his mouth at her breast. 

She feels immense power at the thought that only she can tame the beast. Emboldened, she continues toying with him.

“Darling, is it still alright if I touch you?”

He looks at her almost frightened, so much of the white of his eyes showing that she feels like she is breaking in an animal. The only things giving away his pleasure are his dick, constantly rising under her, coupled with the way he is panting at her breast.

Without waiting for his answer, she takes his right hand, the hand of flesh and blood, and slips two of his fingers between her lips. 

Her nipple falls out of his mouth when his jaw drops open, completely slack as he gapes, wide-eyed, at her sucking on his fingers. She lowers her lashes and looks directly into Clyde’s eyes, knowing how her mouth must look impaled on his hand. She moves her head up and down the length of his two longest fingers, which now feel thick and slippery with her spit. She strokes his middle finger with her tongue as she continues grinding over what feels like his fully erect cock. 

_“Uhhhh.”_ Rey can only see the whites of Clyde’s eyes now. It’s clear he is struggling to remember how to speak. 

Slowly, she drags his fingers out of her mouth and places her hand over his right hand at her waist, waiting.

With herculean effort, he pulls his eyes away from her breast and turns to the ceiling. 

“Rey. Do you — _uhhh.”_

His pants tent higher and Rey lifts herself a fraction of an inch.

His eyes are closed when he grits out the words: “Do you mean it?” 

She knows exactly what he means, and she longs to ask him: _Do_ you?

But regardless of his answer, she knows what hers is. 

“Yes, I do.”

* * *

Clyde cannot remember what else he’s done that day, or that week, or even that month since before Rey slid her tit into his mouth. 

He’s fairly certain he has only half-existed before he ever met her. 

But he also clings to the knowledge of his life before her, knowing everything he’s been through before tonight is the only thing he’s able to draw on that will give him strength enough to love her — because love her, he does. 

So when she tells him that _yes,_ she does mean it, he almost pops a vein in his neck turning his head away from her so he can think clearly for one goddamn second.

“Rey.” He is still only speaking in groans. 

He can hear Jimmy’s voice in his head: _Put your mouth back on her tit and forget you ever said anything._

Clyde jerks his head once to snap himself out of it, then realizes Rey is watching him, waiting to hear him say what he needs to say.

This is why he keeps coming back to her: she _listens_ to him.

But he can’t help his nature — he still has doubts. And the more he’s allowed to know, the less he feels like he has to doubt. So he asks her a question that for once he isn’t sure he wants to know the answer to.

“Do you have … a someone?” He keeps his gaze at the level of her shoulder, looking past her to the wall as he wills her, desperately, to understand. 

It’s so hard when her nipple is such a perfect shape and right next to his cheek, hovering as she breathes; he can almost feel his lips part of their own accord to take her in his mouth, but he shoves his teeth together and locks his jaw long enough to hear her answer. 

Her exhale is louder as she takes a deep breath.

“I _had_ someone,” she says finally. Her voice floats from above him. “But not anymore.”

Clyde isn’t sure how to take that, isn’t sure what she means when she says it. All he wants to do is bury himself in her body and pretend he’s been her only someone, but instead he simply asks, “Why not?”

“He chose something else. And I got stuck.” He imagines her biting her lip. She suddenly sighs and slides down into his lap, and he sees for himself that she is, in fact, biting her lip. 

She is slouching a bit, comfortable and not quite as sexy with her arms around his neck, and that’s how he knows she’s telling the truth. 

_But something she said …_ “Stuck?” he wonders out loud.

She nods. “We came out here from England together, and somehow he’s gone back to the life we had, and I’m out here.”

Well, that didn’t sound like _stuck_ to him. “Sounds to me like you’re just ready. Ready for the next thing.”

She pauses, stops worrying his sleeve as she has been for the past minute. “I suppose I am. I just didn’t know I was waiting for anything.” He looks down his nose at her as she blinks. “I didn’t know _what_ I was waiting for.”

Clyde isn’t sure whether to tell her or let her figure it out for herself. 

He decides on the latter, and reminds himself again of how long he’d wait for her. He’s waited this long, after all. 

What are a few more weeks, or months, or years?

Either way, she seems to have an inkling, like something in her has released, because she settles more comfortably in his arms, carefully avoiding his hard on and dragging his prosthetic hand to encircle her back.

The feel of the mechanical arm seems to remind her of something. “Can I ask you …” her voice is confident, but he notices she is blushing, “can I ask you about your arm?”

“What do you wanna know?” He tries to match her straightforwardness, but it’s hard to fight the urge to lower his voice and talk soft and gentle to her.

What she asks isn’t what he thought she was going to ask. No, what she asks is different — _better,_ just like everything else about her. 

“Do you consider your arm a part of you?” 

He has to think about that. 

“Yeah,” he decides. “Well, maybe not this one. I have another one that I had for longer, and that one … I been through a lot with that one.” 

“Really?” She sits up, clearly interested. “Could I see it?”

He nods. “I’ll bring it next time.”

He feels himself smile involuntarily, a small smile, at the thought of _next time._ When he looks up at her, she is looking back at him shyly. She wears a private smile of her own, like it’s one she didn’t expect him to see. She blushes that he’s caught her. 

It feels like the line connecting their hearts has been pulled taut and something is thrumming along the length of it, back and forth between them.

“Your arm,” she continues gently. She puts a hand under his prosthetic, where the cut of it reveals his real forearm, and brushes her thumb over the skin there. She’s touched him all over, but this feels intimate in a new way. She doesn’t look at him as she continues. “What does it mean to you?”

 _Damn_ if this girl doesn’t confound him at every turn. 

He realizes he’s never said his next words out loud.

“It means I’m very lucky. Means I’m alive.” He looks at her carefully, making sure she understands. “I could’ve lost a lot more.” 

He continues to look straight at her as he keeps talking. _If you love this girl, she has a right to know._ “But the arm also means I’m cursed. Well, our family is.” 

He pauses to allow her to interrupt him, to tell him he’s wrong, to gasp and protest and take over the conversation, but she merely looks at him, waiting for him to continue.

Clyde is in awe. 

_Beautiful, sweet girl, who listens to me so well._

He doesn’t want to confuse her with too many names of too many family members, so he does his best to summarize his research: “Just when things start goin’ good for our family, somethin’ bad swoops in and ruins everything.”

She asks, more quietly, “Did something get ruined for you?”

Clyde narrowly avoids clenching his jaw too tight. He’d established with himself long ago that he wouldn’t give something the time of day if it didn’t deserve it. When he speaks, he is careful to tell Rey only the truth.

“I alway knew she was gonna leave anyhow. All the others did.” 

She makes no move to touch him, for which he is grateful. She just holds his gaze as the weight of what they’d shared settles on them. 

After a minute or so of silence, Rey observes, “So you’re … _ready,_ too.” She uses the word he had replaced her _stuck_ with.

He looks straight in her eyes, forgetting to smile because of the gravity of the moment. “I’m ready,” he says. 

And he means it.

When Rey drags her torso along his, this time it doesn’t feel like it’s faceless for her. He knows it’s not the heat of the moment or the promise of a few more bills in her garter that is making her roll her body in front of his eyes. He feels like his heart is spilling out of his eyes as he looks at her, neither of them ever breaking eye contact as she places his hands on her ass.

It’s no longer a lap dance. She is fully riding him, and the two of them have fallen immediately into simulating the forbidden act.

Rey’s tits are bare, but other than that neither of them have taken off another piece of clothing. Even his boots are still on, dirtying the sheets. 

So why does he feel like his dick is right inside her and they are laying naked in a bed covered in their own sweat? 

He _smells_ her, all of her, her perfume and her scent, and it’s like he’s high, the euphoria he suddenly feels at the fact that she wants him. 

She _wants_ him, and she is telling him, with her body and with her eyes. She’s staring straight at him as she rolls over his dick, coaxing him up and up till he’s sure if he freed himself from his jeans he would thrust straight up into her pussy.

His eyes blow wide at the thought.

Now operating on animal instinct, his right hand lowers to her lingerie bottoms, pawing through the tiny pink ruffles to let his fingers graze the hem of her panties. When he glances down, she is looking at his hand. It covers her whole hip with a grip that will clearly bruise. 

“Fu- _u_ _hhh,”_ he breathes out, looking helplessly at her as she stares at his hand engulfing her. Her teeth are gritted and she looks like she’s about to shatter on top of him.

With one final glance at her blissed-out face to replay for the next week, he splays his fingers on her hip and shoves his nose into her neck, pushing against her like a dog wanting to be pet. 

Without breaking her rhythm, she twines a hand into his hair. He noses over her, pressing his face into her throat till her head is twisted back to fit him under her chin. 

He uses his hands on her hips to shove up into her, trying to pin her on his dick even though it’s still in his jeans. They are both panting like dogs, and he’s sure her tits are chafing against his shirt, so frantically is he rutting up into her.

A drop of sweat has just slid down his temple when the doorknob rattles. The lock holds, and someone knocks a warning: “Kira! They’re comin’ up to unlock this any second now!”

Another rattle. The same voice: “Get your shit together!” 

“Alright!” she yells back. Her voice sounds completely unaffected, and Clyde looks up at her in surprise, almost not believing that she is as far gone as she looks. She sees his confusion and hushes him. “Shh, baby.” 

Somehow she slows them both down gradually, their speed dropping like Clyde is a racehorse, till they are rocking at a much slower pace. Clyde’s hair is sticking to his forehead as he huffs into her shoulder. 

He is still staring at the wall, trying to recover, when Rey does yet another unexpected thing: she drops her nose to his sweaty, filthy neck, and runs her parted lips along the muscle there. 

He takes it as further evidence that he is in paradise. 

“Come back to me,” she murmurs into his neck.

Her eyes are huge with want for him when he pulls back to look at her. A key starts jiggling in the lock, but he just holds her gaze, willing her to understand ...

And she does. Without words, she knows he’s agreed to come back.

“Friday,” she whispers, as the door finally springs open.

* * *

“How much money does he have, Rey?” 

“I told you, I don’t _know!”_

“Bullshit. All that fancy _bouncin’_ and you forget to ask the most important question?” Miss Whitney is incredulous.

 _It’s_ not _the most important question,_ Rey wants to scream in frustration.

“Are you or are you not here for the money?” Miss Whitney has a hand on her hip. “‘Cause I know you sure ain’t here for my sunny personality.”

“I’m making him a regular,” Rey lies through gritted teeth.

“A regular _what_ exactly? Your regular ticket to get yourself off at work?”

Rey hates — _hates_ — talking about Clyde like he is a game. Or a prize. Or someone who may only care about her because of her body and what he can buy from her with his money.

That last thought is particularly painful to her.

Rey turns on a dime, stepping closer to Miss Whitney. In her heels, Rey towers over her. “It’s not like that, and you know it isn’t.”

“You’re losin’ focus, is all I’m sayin’. Why didn’t you come in last Saturday and Sunday?”

“I had what I needed for the week.”

“Well, aren’t you Miss High and Mighty? Don’t _need_ the extra cash — no, not Miss Kira.” Rey thinks Miss Whitney’s sarcasm is the ugliest thing she’s ever heard. “You better be comin’ in tomorrow then.” Miss Whitney points a finger.

“I’m not,” Rey tells her flatly.

 _“Why_ not?”

“I don’t _want_ to,” Rey bites out. “I know my rights. I can set my own hours.” 

“Those hours look like they’re revolving around one person and one person only, and I’m getting suspicious that that person isn’t me.”

Rey can’t believe what she’s hearing. _“You’re_ the one who told me to go after him!”

“I didn’t say to abandon the rest of your job because you only have eyes for him. That’s not what this _job_ is about.” Miss Whitney’s eyes narrow, and her words cut straight to the point. “If you want to have a relationship, you do that outside the club. If police come in and see you doin’ what you were doin’ to that man, we both know that would get you _and_ him kicked out.” 

Rey just glares at her defiantly. She knows everything Miss Whitney is saying is the truth, and yet the other woman had chosen a very poor tack when she’d started the conversation by asking how much money Clyde had.

Rey can’t let her frustration go that easily. “I thought I can treat my customers how I want and let them do whatever they like to me.” 

“Sure you can. But if you do that in a way that isn’t in line with what I feel is best for the club, I have a right to go to management if I want.” Miss Whitney’s posture is unrelenting. The woman doesn’t break their stare or move a muscle — so neither does Rey. 

“I won’t stop you from whorin’ yourself out if you want to. Just don’t expect to still have a job here if you keep this up.” 

Rey has never bemoaned the fact that she cries when she is angry, yet she knows the tears tracking down her face as Miss Whitney leaves the room could be taken as a sign of weakness. 

She has never had a problem drawing the line with a customer. She has never been aroused at work before, never had to ask herself where the boundary line was between working as a stripper and having a relationship with a man. The distinction had always seemed quite clear to her. 

So it was infuriating that Miss Whitney had been so right in so much of what she’d said. 

No, it wasn’t fair of Rey to use her job as an excuse to start a relationship with someone. At the very least, if Rey wanted things to move forward, she ought to try to move their interactions out of the club as quickly as possible. It was the least she could do to try to be decent to Clyde — the very least he deserved.

As long as she was here, dancing for Clyde and stripping for him, their interactions couldn’t be anything more than a game: a fantasy that she was being paid to act out. 

The thought of his name brought her back to her senses, back to the warm, bright lights of the dressing room. Behind her, a practice pole jutted out of the ceiling, an unyielding reminder that she was at her place of work. 

And the only place Clyde had ever asked to see her was at work. 

He’d said he didn’t have someone. But he hadn’t said much else. And she’d been relying very heavily on the fact that the understanding between her and Clyde was largely unspoken. But there were some things that needed to be spoken, and those were the things Clyde hadn’t said. 

Jess was still working the crowd tonight, and probably would be for a few more hours, so Rey imagines what Jess would say to her. 

Ever-practical Jess: _Well, have you talked to him, baby doll?_

_You two just need to have a good sit-down and figure things out._

_And where?_ Rey thinks in reply. _Over a couple glasses of champagne in one of the private rooms?_ No, they couldn’t have such a conversation on even footing unless they both agreed to take things out of the club.

But it was hard when all Rey wanted to do when she was around him was melt him into a boneless mess, rejoice in the power she had over such a man. It had always been part of her job, really. At the club, strippers were the ones in control, creating the fantasy and stoking its flame at the rate and speed of their choice. Men paid good money to be whisked along by women who were experts in crafting a scene. 

Yes, Rey had been obsessed with taking control. 

_But that isn’t being very fair to Clyde, now is it?_

_Control,_ Rey breathes as she pulls her street clothes back on. She had to give up control back to Clyde, give him back control like a scepter being returned to the hands of a king. 

He did make her feel like a princess, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will post on November 25th so my American readers have something to read over Thanksgiving (: Thank you for reading and commenting! 
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/flybluejay_) ❤️  
>   
> Art by [Bree](https://twitter.com/hagxnshall)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Is this what it feels like to truly care for a man? This mess of emotions, this blur of desire?_
> 
> _This longing to control someone who should be under no one’s control?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mind the updated tags!**

People think that things like love is physicality

When in reality it’s meant to hold you down like gravity 

— ["How Does It Feel?" (Samm Henshaw)](https://open.spotify.com/track/7nnz5nWr6iHtiEhH3a22HH)

Rey’s lingerie: [ front ](https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1PjKleUWF3KVjSZPhq6xclXXaS/Black-White-Sexy-Women-Lace-Erotic-Ruffles-Underwire-Open-Bra-Transparent-Crotchless-Panties-Underwear-Lingerie-Set.jpg) and [ side ](https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1axSveHus3KVjSZKbq6xqkFXaA/Black-White-Sexy-Women-Lace-Erotic-Ruffles-Underwire-Open-Bra-Transparent-Crotchless-Panties-Underwear-Lingerie-Set.jpg)

[ Clyde’s tattoo ](https://ultimate-adam-driver.tumblr.com/post/176673464674/a-clyde-logan-mystery-revealed)

* * *

_Friday night._

Rey is surprised to discover that Clyde doesn’t just make her feel like a princess. 

He makes her feel like something _else,_ too.

She owns several sets of white lace lingerie, bought on a whim when she thought she’d be able to stomach roleplaying as a bride in the club, but it all felt wrong to her when she put the pieces on in front of the mirror. Her excuse was that she had never been a bride, nor had a mother to show her what it might’ve looked like. How could she possibly pretend for herself, let alone for a strange man?

So it was astonishing to her when all of the _instincts_ she thought she’d never had were sparked awake in the space of a few weeks by Clyde Logan. The whole week, Rey has thought of nothing but white lace and what Clyde likes.

Suddenly she wonders what he liked to do when he was little, whether he preferred his mum or his dad. She wonders where he buys his clothes from, and whether he’d keep his hand on her leg if they were to drive somewhere together. She wonders what kind of food he makes for himself, and whether he might want a meal served to him in bed, her naked body offered to him as dessert ...

She wonders whether other women asked him to keep the prosthetic on when they were in his bed.

She already knows how she’d answer the question for herself. 

When Rey shaves her cunt that day, she shaves even the strip of hair that she usually leaves, making sure every inch of her is completely bare. Tonight, a pink bow graces her bra, with another pink bow at the hem of her knickers like she is a present to be unwrapped.

She may work as a stripper, but rarely has she ever bared her _self_ to a man. It feels like she is getting ready for something much more than just her shift.

If she was honest with herself, the past few weeks had been the longest striptease of her life. Friday by Friday, week by week, the layers between them were gradually peeled back to reveal a fuller picture of what had always been under her surface, waiting for the right man, the first and only man, to uncover the true Rey. 

_Miss Kira._ No, she hadn’t been Miss Kira for several weeks now. 

She was Rhiannon. _Rey._ She had been no one but herself for several weeks now, lost but now found in the wildness of West Virginia by a man she never expected to find in a million years.

And on this day, a day of love and passion and desire and commitment, she would allow herself to be stripped by someone other than herself. This Friday, like she hadn’t yet done on any Friday prior, she was going to hand him the reins and fall back, trusting he would know what he’d been given.

“Control,” she says aloud. “It’s his. You’re his.” She suddenly smiles, hearing the words out loud. “You’re _his.”_

_But what if he doesn’t want you? What if it’s all just the influence of the club?_

“There’s no one like him.” She pushes the nagging words out of her mind. “Not in all the world.” She points at herself in the mirror. “And you’d be a real sod to muck this up.”

Jess isn’t coming in tonight, so Rey is the one who has to talk herself through her nerves and anticipation. There is no one else in her life that has any idea of what’s about to happen tonight, no one except Jess and —

“Kira.” Miss Whitney appears at the door, holding out a hand. “He’s here.” 

Rey takes the hand offered to help balance herself as she stands. 

Miss Whitney pulls a flower from a hidden place in her sleeve and tucks it into Rey’s hair, whispering a reminder: “Don’t forget to ask him about the money.”

 _What money?_ Rey thinks bravely.

She steps forward into the darkness.

* * *

“You look real good, you know.” Mellie grins, hip against the counter as she holds the bouquet she’d brought at Clyde’s request.

Clyde chews his bottom lip as he looks himself over in the mirror.

“Here.” She sets the flowers down gently before moving to brush stray hair away from his face. One strand slips out, falling to his eyebrow. Mellie leaves it. 

“She’s gonna love ‘em,” she says reassuringly.

“You say somethin’?” Clyde isn’t listening. 

He’s heard nothing that anyone’s said to him for the past week. 

“Tell her you picked ‘em yourself.” Mellie hands him the bouquet. 

Clyde quivers, tall and tense, as he puts one hand on the bouquet. His eyes betray that rare combination of strength and fear that is uniquely his, the two emotions feeding off each other in a loop. Mellie notices and tells him, in a voice born of years of practice, “It’s _alright,_ Clyde. She already likes you.” 

Clyde has always been enough for himself. But being enough for someone else, to the point that that someone would be willing to stay with him and never leave, was something he’d only ever imagined.

Mellie clears her throat. “I’m gonna tell you somethin’ I don’t want you to ever forget, and I just hope you’re ready to hear it. Jimmy and I always told each other, ‘Whoever ends up with him will be gettin’ the best man in the world.’” She looks at Clyde pointedly. “You believe that, don’t you?” 

Clyde says nothing — just tilts his head toward Mellie, nostrils flaring.

“Well, good. Glad that’s settled then.” She finally lets go of the bouquet. “Go get ‘em, tiger.”

Clyde stares himself down one more time before pushing out the door. He’s been living in a dream: a dream world where someone _wants_ him. And she’s the dream he has to get back to as soon as possible.

* * *

“What do you mean all the rooms with beds are taken?” 

Rey tries to slow her breathing. Her frustration is building much too quickly.

Chewie spreads his arms, apologetic. 

“Huge bachelor party. And they all wanted their own rooms. Not much I can do.” He shrugs. “Oh, and he already told me how much he was planning to pay you for the night.”

Rey’s heart pricks with a tiny bit of sadness at the mention of _money_. “Well, where’ve you put him, then?” 

“Only thing open was the small room at the end of the hall.”

“With the round table? And the mirror?” 

“That’s the one. Tiny, but enough room to do what you need to do in there.” Rey isn’t sure if Chewie’s gruffness is an encouragement, or a warning.

“Right.” 

Rey could grind her teeth in anger. 

Even though she and Clyde hadn’t spoken since the Friday prior, she’d felt from him somehow that _this_ was to be their night. But they wouldn’t even have the luxury of space that a bed would provide. 

“He’s already in there, waitin’ for you. I’ll walk you down,” Chewie says gently.

Rey braces a hand on Chewie’s arm as she tiptoes up to kiss the air by his cheek. None of it was his fault that things weren’t going according to her plan. After all, there was no one else she’d confided in about her … _understanding_ with Clyde. Yet somehow the right people in her life seemed to know what had to be done, somehow. 

She wasn’t sure whether to chalk it up to timing, coincidence, or just the right kind of luck _._

The hallway stretches like an aisle before her as Rey holds lightly onto Chewie’s arm. Each of her steps feel shakier than the last. The music for her march is a fast, pounding bass, pierced by electronic sounds and the sound of men shouting. She knows other girls are on the pole a floor below her — a fitting party for the ceremony that was about to take place.

When they reach the room, Chewie opens the door for her as she steps inside. She moves quickly to click the lock shut.

When she turns back around, there he is at the end of her journey, clutching a bouquet of flowers: her hunched and unsmiling groom. 

A grocery bag is sat next to him on the booth-style bench. The seat forms a half-circle on one side of a small round table, from which a thick, golden pole rises to the ceiling. Mirrors cover the wall from the height of the bench and upward, making the room seem infinitely bigger than it is. 

Everything is black — black, shiny table, black vinyl booth — and the room feels tight and hot. Yet the air seems to expand and cool as Clyde and Rey look at each other. 

Rey starts to panic when she realizes all of the things she wants to say are _horrid_ conversation starters.

_Would it drive you away if the first thing I said to you was, ‘Don’t leave’?_

_They want me to care about the money, but all I care about is you._

_Promise me we’ll be loyal to each other._

_I_ do _take you. I do, I do, I do._

In the mirrors, their bodies are reflected in a million different fragments, a million pieces of _them_ like human witnesses to this moment where they stand and breathe before an invisible altar.

Without preamble, Clyde holds the bouquet out to her grimly, lips pursed in the begrudging fashion that he adopts when he doesn’t approve of something. She knows just as truly as she knows her own heart that his hesitation stems not from the fact that he doesn’t want to give her flowers, but that he doesn’t want to give her flowers _in this way._

 _The privilege of dancing for you is worth so much more than money. You give_ me _a gift when you let me close to you._

Perfunctory words fall out of her before she can stop them, a symptom of her nervousness and fear in the face of this _something_ that looms between them, bigger tonight than it’s ever been before. “You really you didn’t have to, Clyde —”

She cuts herself short when he steps forward and slides her arms around him, pulling her into what she recognizes is their first hug.

Like so much of what has passed between him and her, it is a silent, physical expression of so much more. Her apology, her gratitude, her longing are wrapped into her slim arms over his shoulders. The bow on her bra presses into his breastbone like the care she longs to press into his heart.

So when his arms tighten around her, and she feels his head drop into her hair, his breathing barely there, she recognizes it for what it is: his acceptance. His love. Her heart leaps into her mouth with joy. It’s all going to be alright, somehow.

At the moment, she doesn’t want to think too hard about _how_ it could all be alright.

Together, they sit, this time side by side around the table. Clyde furrows his brow as he squeezes himself in, and Rey can’t help laughing. She smiles at him, full-on and wide, as he looks at her in surprise. 

An answering smile grows slowly on his face once he realizes her goodwill toward him, and Rey wishes headily that the warmth of his smile could be the only thing waking her up in the morning, the only thing keeping her up at night.

“Brought you this.” He reaches for the bag next to him and slides it to her on the table, even though they are seated so close that her right leg is pressed against his left. 

Her nerves are still barely contained. She knows her brow is unattractively wrinkled as she opens the bag.

“Clyde!” She shuts it, eyes wide with sudden joy. “You didn’t!” 

His eyes are soft as he looks at her. “Go on,” he smiles.

She gives him one last conspiratorial look before opening the bag again. 

She slides his old prosthetic arm out slowly, as though half of Clyde’s life is contained in the shell of an arm. 

Something tells her that particular intuition is correct.

She admires it as though it is a rare artifact, turning it this way and that and examining how the buckle works before setting it on the table, hand palm up.

“Lovely,” she says quietly. She glances at Clyde, who is breathing quietly next to her. 

Her heels bring them almost to eye level when she is standing, but seated by his side, she finds herself craning her neck up more sharply, eyeing him from an angle that is more extreme. 

He looks down at her with eyes too deep to be real before clearing his throat. “Told you I’d bring it.” His voice sounds eager and oddly strained. “It’s for you.” 

“You want me to keep it?” She picks up the arm again, runs her hand along the chipped and scarred fingers.

“Well, it’s yours if you want it.” He seems so uncertain, and Rey’s heart swells. “It’s lucky.”

“Lucky, eh? Like your ring?” She lifts a hand to touch his ring and feels immediately alarmed when she realizes her whole hand can wrap around one of his fingers.

Clyde notices her eyes widen. When he looks down at their hands together, he seems inordinately pleased, and something in her uncurls when she thinks about _why_ he might be smiling so softly to himself.

“The ring was my daddy’s,” he informs her, his confidence growing even as Rey’s is shrinking. “One of the things was specially for me after the settlement. That’s why it’s lucky, too.” His eyes glow.

“I’ve never had anything like that,” Rey confesses. She traces the curve of the metal, noticing the scratches on it. “I wouldn’t say my life has been unlucky. But then again, it’s never been very lucky, either.”

He waits for her to continue, his finger crooked loosely in her hand.

She answers his unspoken question: “Well, there’s not really much to tell about my luck, is there? My luck is …” 

She huffs and stares down at the table, feeling as though she and Clyde have traded places, and she doesn’t understand how or why. _She_ is now the anxious and wandering soul, and he is the calm and the answer to her questions.

She scrambles to say something. “My luck is my friend Jess, I suppose. Having a place to sleep and food to eat. Being able to earn my own keep. That’s all a girl can ask for, isn’t it?” 

He watches her in mild silence, as though he senses her skittishness and doesn’t want to spook her. They still haven’t moved any closer than sitting next to each other. 

Her hand goes absentmindedly to the tattoo on his right forearm. Suddenly, she feels very strongly the difference between them: his age, his height, his size, his demeanor. The very things that she is _not_ are all of the things that he _is,_ and that fact is not only terrifying, but also comforting. Satisfying. A relief, a _release_ she never knew she needed. 

She doesn’t need any more of her uncertainty than she already has. What she needs is someone who is his own man, who has lived a life before her and come out on the other side. 

She needs _him._

She looks up, strengthened. “And you. My luck is you.” 

His forehead is no longer creased, and his expression is fully open, smile playing at his lips like the lights hidden in the alcoves of their private room. 

“Now this,” he continues, as though he hadn’t just watched her have a revelation in the last minute, “this I got when I didn’t know about luck yet.” He turns his eyes to his tattoo, and she continues staring at his face a beat too long before looking where he indicates. 

A scroll around the skull reads something about death. A sword cuts the image jaggedly in half. 

She wonders why she’s never asked him about it before, never looked at it too closely. It was as though she knew subconsciously that its meaning was beyond her.

Nothing but intimidation radiates off the shape and design of the ink, and Rey notices that she feels quite detached from the sight, indifferent, as though it is _not_ a part of Clyde the way his old prosthetic arm is.

“Got it my first year in the Army. Back when I was young and dumb. Not that I’ve changed much.” He must notice her silence at his joke, because he says very amiably, “Not as pretty as _your_ tattoo, that’s for sure.” 

“No, no, it’s —” She finally finds the words. “I love anything that tells me about you. Anything.” 

Still, the tattoo makes her feel uneasy once again about the differences between them. If his old life is the reason he’s able to care for her so well, why does she feel like it also creates a chasm between them that can’t be bridged?

In her discomfort and uncertainty, she chooses to leverage the one advantage she knows she will always have over him. 

She lifts her feet onto the seat and perches on the table facing him, with her hands on her knees.

“Rey?” His concern seems gentle, as though he knows what she’s doing isn’t coming from a place of confidence.

She also sees that his eyes are darkening as he gets an excellent frontal view of her lingerie. 

It’s all too easy for her to get high off the power she has over him, and she dips two fingers down to her crotch as he watches before bringing them up to his lips.

 _“Hush,_ darling.” She adopts the voice she uses to tell men she’s in charge — a voice she uses on any old joe. She knows Clyde can tell it’s not exactly the real her speaking. But in her mind, she begs him to understand that this brokenness of hers is one of the truest parts of her self that she has to give him.

Resolving to make the most of her dissatisfaction and insecurity, she climbs over his forearm, centering herself over the tattoo before lightly dragging her crotch over his skin. 

Even though the contact is incredibly soft, Clyde shudders when she comes down on him. When he opens his eyes again, something has shifted and his whole pupil is fully dilated. 

“Rey,” he growls. His gentleness is replaced by harsh urgency. 

She doesn’t answer, instead looking at him teasingly out of the corner of her eye as she pushes just a little bit harder over his arm and the tattoo whose presence threatens her. She feels the hair on his arm against the fabric of her knickers, which are growing more and more damp. 

When she looks at herself in the mirror, she looks as destroyed and unmoored as she feels. 

“Baby girl.” His use of the endearment fuzzes her mind out further, makes her rock on his forearm a little more mindlessly. “Baby ... _Rey,_ god _damn …_ you don’t have to do this.” 

_Oh, but I do,_ she thinks frantically. _I really, really do._

_Is this what it feels like to truly care for a man? This mess of emotions, this blur of desire?_

_This longing to control someone who should be under no one’s control?_

She slides her hands up to her lingerie top and slips the straps down. Seeing herself writhing against him in the mirror is making her soak through her knickers, some of it leaking out from the fabric to dampen his arm.

 _Take it,_ she thinks forcefully as she watches his gaze get darker, unfocused. 

She unclasps the bra and tosses it behind her on the table. She runs her hands over and around her breasts, kneading and pinching them to further stimulate herself. 

His prosthetic arm whirs, and out of the corner of her eye, she sees the metal fingers clench his knee with a death-like grip.

_That’s right, love. You’ll take what I’m giving you._

She swallows as she rides, dazed at her own vehemence, but she feels justified as she watches Clyde visibly rise to match it. He’s closed his eyes, prosthetic hand gripping his thigh mercilessly, but once he opens them, she no longer recognizes him. 

His head is tilted at an imperious angle, eyebrows sharp and drawn together as he looks down his nose at her getting herself off on his forearm. 

She gives a command to her beast. “The camera, love.” She takes a hand off her breast to point to a corner of the ceiling. 

The feel of her wetness is acute, and she slides more of her lubrication onto his forearm before pulling off of him completely.

It takes him much faster than she expected to pull a chair up to the ceiling and crush the camera with his prosthetic hand. She chews on a finger in her mouth as she watches him, watches the size of his arms as he moves and flexes and swings. She allows the sight of his body to keep her in her state of keyed-up frenzy. 

After stepping down from the chair, he jiggles the doorknob to make sure the room is well and truly locked. When he turns to her, his erection is clearly visible.

He looks her right in the eye, unflinching, and Rey’s heart freezes. 

She is caught: his prey.

He shoves the chair out of the way and settles himself to stand at the edge of the table. He doesn’t smirk, but there is some sort of smugness in his expression as he brings his own forearm to his nose. With a loud huff, he smells, then fully _licks_ what she smeared of herself there.

Her gasp is louder than she means it to be. Her second gasp is even louder when he grabs her hips and pulls her to the edge of the table. He drags her till she’s close enough to feel the heat of his body as he towers behind her. She is seated like she was over his forearm, kneeling like a child with her back against his chest. Her hands are on the table to steady herself, heels sticking out on either side of his torso. 

When she risks a glance at their reflections in the mirror, she instantly regrets it. Her whole body is seared by the look on his face, not an inch of her unaffected as he holds her hips in his hands.

In an attempt to give herself the illusion of control, she reaches a hand behind her, still facing the mirror, and slides a hand around his neck with all the desperation of a woman drowning. One of her breasts goes taut with the motion, and his eyes burn her when she sees him notice.

He reaches for his old prosthetic arm, which is still on the table, and purposely grazes her bare shoulder as he moves. The brush of his skin makes her whole body shudder. 

Then she feels his fingers putting light pressure under her ass, guiding her up high enough for him to slip the prosthetic arm between her legs, plastic forearm coming to rest right under her — 

Her eyes widen, then cloud over when she realizes what he wants her to do … and what he wants to do behind her. 

_Will she ever again be as aroused as she is in this moment?_

“Rub yourself on me, baby girl.” He issues the command from behind her, voice pitched low as an earthquake. His hands rest like iron weights on her hips, and she revels in the fact that she has no choice but to do what he wants her to.

She dips a hand into herself to slick the arm with her own lubrication, then begins to rub herself over his old prosthetic arm, tiny gasps escaping as she squirms over the plastic.

* * *

It would appear that today is his last day on earth. 

There can be no other explanation for the world of sensations he can honestly say he has never felt before. All of life and death swirl through him from the moment she steps in the room.

And nothing in the books he’s read or the lives he’s lived has ever prepared him to have a woman so _bare_ before him, her emotions so helplessly at his mercy as he watches how every little thing he does — everything little thing he _is_ — seems to affect her. 

He knows now she can’t possibly have felt this way for the other men she’s done things to or with in this club. She is so full of joy and light, intensity and attention, he knows there’s no way she’s had her heart broken that many times. 

No, there seems to be only one person in her life who has the power to break her heart to pieces, and it is none other than him, Clyde Logan: bartender at Duck Tape, brother to Jimmy and Mel, member of a successful heist crew, and born and bred West Virginian.

But out of all of his roles, none of them is more important than who he now knows he is to Rey. 

So he accepts with grace the trust he can tell she is placing in him, doesn’t say more than what he feels she needs him to say as he watches her oh-so-carefully. Her youth and uncertainty are suddenly coming through in a painful way, but he’s said he’s wanted all of her from the very, very beginning, and _fuck_ him if he wasn’t going to take whatever she was able to give him. 

He only hoped he could expect the same grace from her when his time came to be in need.

But when she climbs atop his forearm, the lines between her lust and his lust begin to blur, and he is thrown by how quickly her need becomes his need. 

When he uses his metal hand to squeeze the camera in half, he thinks to himself that it’s the most worthy act the thing could be used for: destroying whatever gets in the way of him and Rey getting to be together.

When he turns back to see her on her knees atop the table, finger in her teeth as she watches him move, he wants her writhing for him _right that second_. 

He drags her bodily over the table, barely registering her gasps. 

It’s the goddamn mirror that drives him absolutely crazy. Seeing her in front of him, so clearly at his mercy, the difference between their bodies is stark. 

Her waist is less than half the width of his torso. From the base of his palm to the tips of his fingers, his hand is almost as long as her forearm. 

He wants to crush her under his shoulders and pin her with his thighs.

Her size and her softness, the way she means it whenever she talks to him ... so many things about her throw him into an animal lust he can barely keep chained when he’s around her. But now it begs to be released — and he doesn’t want to wait anymore.

So when she grabs his neck to try to take control, he slides his old arm right between her legs just as if he were wearing it, and he tells her exactly what it is they’re going to do: 

“Rub yourself on me, baby girl.”

The first slide of her ass cheeks against his crotch shows him he is too far from the edge of the table. He grips her hips harder, grunting “Come _— here”_ as he pulls her viciously toward him.

His palm is spread over all of her hip bone, his fingers barely touching her belly button. He could _break_ her if he wanted to.

This time when he pulls her back against him her ass hits him _right_ where he needs it. He’d been hard since she started rubbing on his tattoo like a goddamn cat. 

He keeps his prosthetic hand on her hip and uses the other to reach into his pants and adjust himself up. Even the drag of the fabric on his cock makes him groan, and she seems to get _real_ breathy once she hears his voice. 

He himself is huffing like a bull, all of his physical effort directed toward dry humping her as aggressively as he can get away with. 

Each time he pulls her into him, he urges pants and moans out of her mouth, sending the noise of her arousal into the air like smoke. When she steadies her hands on the table, it is slightly off-balance, and it begins to rattle under them, louder and louder, as they move.

And below her gasping, below the rattling, below his destroyed groans, there’s a quiet _click,_ _click, click_ of her wet pussy rubbing on his old arm.

Clyde fully intends to come in his pants, and he damn near believes he can do it from that noise alone.

He wants to try to tell her, to try to convey even a quarter of what she’s done to him and what he’s going to do to her, but all he can manage is a mess of nonsense, the words of his devotion trimmed to the barest of bones. 

_“Baby — baby —”_

_“Mine — Rey —”_

_“Never — let you —”_

She answers him with unformed cries of her own. 

“Fas — _faster,”_ she gasps, and he obeys, like the fanatic worshipper of her body that he is. Her neck is tilted wide open to him and he digs his whole face into her throat. 

When she comes apart below him, Clyde finally loses his mind.

“Cly- _Clyde!_ _Ahhh_ — _”_

“Y-you — fuck. _Fuck!”_

His voice is vicious, terrifying. The pole is clinking in the ceiling, table clanging against the floor as Clyde throws himself against her again and again. He has no rhythm at all, hips totally erratic with the strain. When he looks in the mirror, he curses again at the sight of her: eyes completely closed, mouth completely open, breasts springing forward repeatedly from the force of his body.

He wrestles her to him when he starts to come, one arm pinning her hips and the other above her tits, fully drowning himself in _just_ — _her._

_“Rey … uhhhh —”_

He comes in his pants, the stain spreading to darken his jeans. 

He looks up to see them in the mirror and spurts again with a moan. 

They both look completely undone: Rey’s mouth is still open in wanton ecstasy, perfect teeth glittering as she smiles, and he longs to _shove_ two fingers down her throat — any way to further claim her as his. But he himself is too wrecked, can barely move: hunched on top of her and buckled at the knees, he can only pant against her shoulder, baptizing her with his sweat. 

He only moves when she twitches and he realizes that his prosthetic fingers are digging bruises into her waist. He loosens only a little — a very, very little — to let her adjust, and then crushes her to him again, drool spilling onto her back. After half a minute of mindless bliss, the drool reminds him of something.

“Lemme see,” he growls, and pulls his old prosthetic arm out from under her.

Overstimulated as she is, she yelps when it drags through her folds. 

He bends his head over her shoulder and nuzzles her neck, silently asking her to look over at him. Her sleepy eyes suddenly spark when he puts his tongue to her cum on the arm and licks it clean off. He swipes at it one or two more times for good measure, eyes never leaving hers.

Her eyes light with the brightness he loves so much, and she slams his hand back onto the table and turns to face him, tearing furiously at his belt, when the door slams open.

* * *

_The camera!_

_Fuck._

Her hands are still on his belt, and rather than look at whoever’s just come through the door, she follows her instincts and stares pleadingly up at Clyde, begging forgiveness.

He looks a proper _disaster:_ face red and dripping sweat, lips still plump and shiny with _her_ smeared all over them, but his expression is full of such helpless adoration she feels instantly mollified.

“Chewie.” She finally addresses the bouncer who’d come into the room.

But it isn’t Chewie. Rey doesn’t recognize the man. He’s dressed as one of their bouncers, though, and he holds out a floor-length robe to her with averted eyes as he steps toward Clyde.

“Miss Kira, Miss Whitney says you’re done for the night. I need to escort this man out.” 

He puts a hand on Clyde’s arm, and something in Clyde’s eyes shifts.

“I haven’t paid her yet,” Clyde says in an unsteady voice. It’s clear he’s saying the very first thing that popped into his head. He is still looking at Rey, not even turning to acknowledge the other man.

“Well, you go ahead and do that, and after this you’ll need to say goodbye to the little lady.”

Suddenly weary, so weary, Rey slides to the floor, heels clattering much too loudly as the strange man hovers by the door, not looking at either of them. 

Rey knows Clyde is having no trouble sensing her agitation — she is practically radiating it. His teeth grit as he asks the bouncer, “Can you give us a sec?” 

The other man eyes him before stepping outside the door, just out of earshot for the pounding bass to cover their conversation. 

Rey drapes the robe over her shoulders, but doesn’t fasten the tie. She places Clyde’s old prosthetic and the bouquet of flowers into the grocery bag before looking up at him stonily. 

Her tears have been welling up for the past few minutes, so acute is her frustration and anger. 

“Rey. Darlin’...” He hasn’t moved close enough to touch her, so why does it feel like his body is still only inches away from hers, as they were just a minute ago? “Don’t go thinkin’ that _any_ of this is your fault.” 

His expression is so serious, it tears her heart in two. But it is his next words that wrench a sob out of her. 

“We both know I can’t say no to you, baby girl.” 

_“Clyde!”_ she screams suddenly. 

She is _furious_. So, _so_ angry. 

None of this is right. None of this should be happening.

They should _never_ have to leave each other. She _never_ wants to leave him: never, never, never. 

Whatever mess they’ve suddenly found themselves in, she wishes it would all just disappear that instant. She’d thought she was strong, but she hadn’t known how great the pain could really be.

He reaches into his pocket, visibly wincing as the fabric rubs against his cock.

“I hope this is enough,” he says quietly as he holds something out in his hand. 

At that, Rey’s eyes blur miserably and she can no longer see for the tears. She knows he is offering her what must be the thickest stack of hundred-dollar bills she’s ever seen in her life.

Her rage is so intense, she can’t speak. 

Vision still clouded, she leans over and in one harsh motion yanks her knickers down her legs, wetness sliding down her calf. She steps out of the pair and wrenches them off the floor none too gently.

 _“Don’t,”_ is all she can manage. Her teeth are gritted in what she knows must be an appallingly ugly expression. She doesn’t look at Clyde as she holds out the lingerie. 

“Take them,” she says.

Neither of them move, which only infuriates Rey more.

“I am _never_ taking your money again _._ Do you hear me? Never.” The tears are finally falling onto her cheeks now. She feels her false eyelashes clotting together. 

“You will _never_ pay me again. And I said, _take them.”_

When Rey finally meets Clyde’s eyes, he looks fit to kill. The only other time she’d seen his brow _this_ dark, seen him look _this_ inflamed, was not five minutes ago when he watching himself give her the most erotic orgasm of her entire life.

She knows without being told that the bloodlust currently in his eyes is the other side of the coin of his all-consuming passion for her. That knowledge melds together with all the residual anger she’s been holding since she met him until she can feel nothing but what Clyde feels … what Clyde _makes_ her feel.

His eyes are murder as his prosthetic hand closes over the knickers. He shoves them too slowly into one pocket, and puts the bills back into a different pocket.

He seems to understand, just as Rey also so clearly understands, that the events of tonight have bound them to each other in an unspoken agreement that neither of them will escape from for as long as they both shall live.

She ties the robe up violently, mouth in a tight line, and takes one last look at him: his arms at his sides, breathing heavy in his fierceness — a lion caged at the last second, an ocean only barely contained.

Having done the impossible, she repeats again the mantra that simultaneously crushes and sustains her: she loves him. 

_I love him. I love him._

When she can no longer look, she rushes past him, heels clicking stubbornly on the floor as she moves to the door. He waits a moment before stalking out after her, silent as the grave.

The two of them walk out of the private room like enemies, side by side and mad as hornets.

The bouncer hurries down the hall after them as soon as he realizes the room is empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate. I'm thankful for you all who are reading!
> 
> Next chapter will post on November 28th. 
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/flybluejay_) ❤️
> 
> By [Cristina](https://twitter.com/ang3lview): More versions of the art in [this thread](https://twitter.com/flybluejay_/status/1326901584027148288?s=20) on Twitter.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Listen, _Clyde.” Her voice is strange and firm again. “I’m just a stripper, alright? Nothing more.”_
> 
> Crack _goes the phone in his hand._
> 
>  _“And since I’m_ only _a stripper, none of it was real.”_
> 
> _Another crack. This time he knows it’s definitely him who is breaking another pencil._

Por favor no me dejes

_Please don’t leave me_

Que soy valiente en corresponderte 

_For I am being brave in loving you back_

— ["Tú sí sabes quererme" (Natalia Lafourcade, translation mine)](https://open.spotify.com/track/6p3yxt0uJJshAS3CT0znQg)

* * *

_Friday night._

A drop spills on the bar. Clyde wipes it down.

Someone orders a drink. Clyde makes it. 

Someone asks him a question. He answers it. 

Or at least he thinks he does. He isn’t sure. His face is set against the night like stone, gaze centered somewhere between the pool tables, as he recites, over and over, the facts of his situation.

Rey needs to have a choice. He wants to give her that choice. 

Rey needs money so she can make her choice. But she won’t take his money any longer.

The only thing he wants to do in the world is see her. But that’s the one thing he can’t do, because she won’t take his money. 

But if she won’t take his money, she won’t be able to make a choice. And if she isn’t able to make a choice, she can’t choose him.

Never in his sorry life has he been this tormented by _anyone_ the way that belonging to Rey has tormented him. 

Because he does — belong to her, that is.

Somehow, when he left her, Clyde made it home through the total darkness. He went into the bathroom to wipe the dried cum off his shaft and glared at himself in the mirror till he couldn’t recognize his own face.

When he stripped and set his boxer briefs on the counter, he saw the stain of his own spend crusted into the fabric.

In a moment of pure self-torture, he had taken her panties out of his jeans pocket and set them on top of his own underwear, but not before bringing them to his nose and breathing in. 

Delicious, his baby. 

And no longer his. 

_My luck is you,_ she had said.

 _Hell of a lot of good it did you, baby girl_. _I ain’t been nothin’ but trouble for you._

He has a new thought about his curse theory, and, unlike everything else he’d uncovered before, it bore him no excitement, no promise of clarity or hope for his future. 

His new theory was this: maybe the Logans create their own curses. 

Maybe everything bad that’s ever happened to them is the fault of their own dumb asses. 

“Clyde!” The voice comes from the office.

“Yeah?” Clyde sets the drink he just poured in front of a customer before turning to the voice. In profile, every line of him is set, the strength of his nose and the jut of his lips shining eerily in the light of the bar. 

He feels just as he looks, like a statue made of marble. 

“Someone on the line for you!” 

As he moves toward the desk, he runs through who could be calling him. It could be Jimmy asking for a favor, Mellie reminding him of something he had to do ...

He picks up the landline. “Hello?”

When he hears a whispered, accented, _“Clyde?”_ his heart stops in his chest. 

_“Rey?”_

The plastic casing of the phone immediately cracks as he clutches it with a death grip. 

“You alright, baby girl?”

“Clyde! Clyde …” She drags out his name in a strange way. “I don’t …” She trails off, sounding confused. 

Clyde swallows hard, then swallows again. Still, the bitter taste doesn’t leave his mouth. 

He’s been around enough drunks to know when he’s talking to one. He just wishes with every bone in his body that it weren’t _Rey._

“Clyde. _”_ Her voice is suddenly stern. “Why haven’t you _come?”_

“Well, I thought —”

She starts to laugh, then cuts herself off abruptly. “Re _mem_ ber, Clyde? Remember when you _came?”_

“I — I remember, darlin’. It’s all I been thinkin’ about,” he croaks pitifully into the receiver. 

“Clyde, darling, I don’t think I can ...” Her voice sounds clear and matter-of-fact, but she trails off again, losing herself in thought. 

“Sweetheart, where — where are you?” His mechanical hand whirs, and he notices belatedly he’s broken a pencil in half. 

Then he notices two other broken pencils on the desk that hadn’t been there when he came in. 

_Did he do that?_

_“Listen_ , Clyde.” Her voice is strange and firm again. “I’m just a stripper, alright? Nothing more.” 

_Crack_ goes the phone in his hand. 

“And since I’m _only_ a stripper, none of it was real.”

Another crack. This time he knows it’s definitely him who is breaking another pencil.

His hand shakes on the receiver as he listens to her talk. “She told me … she told me I have to work this whole week if I don’t want to lose my job.” 

Her voice is hoarse like she’s crying, and Clyde wants to hurl something out the window and smash every glass in sight.

“But they all want to touch me,” she takes a deep breath, “and _I can’t let them_. I can’t let them … because of _you.”_ Her voice breaks at the confession.

Raucous voices sound behind her, laughing; then the sound of a car door slamming. 

If he wasn’t tied to the office landline, Clyde’s own car door would be slamming, too. 

As it is, Clyde can only grind his teeth and take his punishment: the torture of a drunk and pleading Rey losing herself over him. 

“Darling,” and there is the bite of her accent, tone once again firm. “You came. And I came. Because you’re you, and I’m me. So why haven’t you _come?”_

In the depths of his self-loathing he finds his voice. “I’m comin’ _right_ the hell now, sweetheart.” 

“I … I don’t think I can drive _,”_ she stutters.

An animal whine slides out of Clyde’s throat. “Please tell me where you are, baby girl.”

“I’m _waiting_ for you. Please, Clyde.” Again, without warning, her tone shifts. “I deserve it. I know I do, I deserve it.” She is tearing up, voice desperate. “Just come find me. I deserve it.”

Like always, Clyde knows exactly what she means. 

“Don’t move, Rey. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” 

He barely hears her soft _yes_ before slamming the phone down, mind shot through with a hot emotion he has no idea how to name. When he looks up, Mellie is in the doorway. Her face is concerned, as though she’d heard the whole conversation.

“Clyde, you look —” 

“I gotta go, Mel.” He moves to leave, but Mellie stops him with a hand on his arm. 

“Was that your girl?” 

Clyde doesn’t answer, just waits stonily for her to step aside.

Mellie pulls something out of her pocket: keys. “Take the truck.” 

“Why?” Clyde’s voice comes out as dry and cracked as he feels.

“Just take it. I’ll tell Jimmy later.”

Clyde doesn’t understand, but for once in his life he has neither the time nor the desire to clarify. Instead, he just pulls his car keys out of his pocket and hands them to his sister before grabbing the keys to the truck. 

He doesn’t thank Mellie as he barrels out the door.

* * *

Rey feels like an alien species on the wrong planet. She’s returned to the life of the fantasy player, whose only job was to convince everyone else the act was real.

It was what she had been doing for years before Clyde came, so why can’t she slip back into it now? 

She finds herself telling the same rule over and over to every man that asks her for a lap dance: they cannot touch any part of her. All they can do is watch. 

_You can look but don’t touch,_ she thinks to herself hopelessly, _because if you touch, Clyde will know._

As she circles above them, grazes their shirts, keeps her hands on her own body and never on them, she sometimes gives in to the desire to close her eyes. She knows it looks like she is merely enjoying herself, helping to sell the fantasy. But in reality, she pretends each man is Clyde. But of course, the size of the thighs is all wrong, the tone of the voice is all wrong, and when she opens her eyes, she is hit with the truth that all of it is all wrong.

Because Clyde isn’t coming back — and if he did, Miss Whitney had made very clear that Rey wasn’t going to get to see him.

Maybe if Rey were the slightest bit tipsy, she’d be able to think straight about the whole thing. So she takes the first shot she’d taken at work in many, many months in an attempt to make the fantasy become her only reality.

Except the first shot doesn’t take. So she has to take another. And then another. 

After one hour and several more shots, she finally admits she’s feeling as wretched as when she’d started, so she decides to do something she hasn’t done since her first year stripping: she convinces a man to buy her a drink. 

And then one man’s offer prompts another man to make an offer. 

_“Drinks on me, sugar!”_

_“Be a good lil’ girl and have another one, won’tcha, doll?”_

_“C’mere, you — ”_

Rey has never felt cheaper: as though she really could be bought and sold. The fantasy of belonging to a man if he only paid her enough is a fantasy that is quickly becoming … real. 

The last thing she can take pride in was knowing that Clyde would never try to pay her again. _That_ was a fantasy that she truly had made real: that one man would care so much for her that he wouldn’t treat her like she could be bought. 

By the fourth or fifth drink, Rey knows she is sloppy. She wanders into the dressing room, ungrounded and clumsy on her feet, as though her heart exists somewhere far away from her body.

She certainly feels like that is the case.

“Rey? _Rey!”_ She hears Jess’ heels clomp closer and closer, till someone is at Rey’s side, holding her up. “Girl, what the _hell_ are you doin’?” 

“Jess, how in the world did you find me?” Rey can’t believe it. “You work here, too?”

“You _told_ me to meet you in the dressing room, Rey. And I came ‘cause you are drunk as hell.”

“I am _not!_ Not at _all!”_ she assures Jess vehemently.

“Sit down, girl.” Jess pulls up a chair. Rey barely takes a seat before bursting into tears. 

“What happened to me?” she cries between sniffs. “Why aren’t things the same?”

“Well, ‘cause you met a fella, Rey. Speakin’ of him … is he comin’ tonight?” Jess looks tentative, as though Rey is going to break into pieces before she can answer. 

Rey took offense. This was a question that did not make sense. “Why would he come? I don’t,” _— hiccup —_ “I don’t understand.”

“Well, ‘cause that big heart of yours is breakin’, clearly!” Jess sounds exasperated.

“Jess.” Rey leans forward and puts her hand on Jess’ shoulder — except it ends up landing on her friend’s head instead. “I’m a stripper. He just doesn’t want to pay for me anymore.”

“That’s a lie, and you know it, Rey.” Jess moves Rey’s hand off her head. “That man would try to sell the moon if it meant he could have you. I saw what he gave you, remember? He doesn’t care how much it costs.”

Rey can’t keep up with that logic. She spreads her arms, gesturing around the room. “Then where is he? Why isn’t he here?”

“I don’t know, Rey. You should ask him.” And suddenly Jess does a strange thing.

She pulls out her cell phone. 

“When I was out last Friday,” she taps at the screen, “and never you mind who I was with ...” She holds up the phone to Rey. “We went to this bar, in the next county.” 

Rey squints at the photo, nose scrunched and much too close to the screen. “I can’t read it.”

Jess sighs before reading the name on the building to her. “It’s called Duck Tape.” The expression on Jess’ face makes Rey feel suddenly squeamish. “And I think your man works there.”

“No, he doesn’t!” Rey exclaims quickly, although she had no way of knowing whether Jess was telling the truth or not. “Why would he work there?” 

“I talked to someone there, but ... Rey, I just think you should call.” Jess ignores her protests, speaking very clearly. “I think if you call him, he’ll come.”

Rey suddenly starts laughing, although she doesn’t know why. Better to laugh than to sob uncontrollably, perhaps?

“Just tell him your shift is over and you need him to pick you up. ‘Cause you can’t drive, and you really shouldn’t be workin’ anymore anyway.” Jess puts the phone in her hand, and Rey stares at it, feeling something — _Excitement? Anxiety?_ — simmering in her veins.

“Shouldn’t he already know?” she blurts out. Her momentary lucidity catches her off guard.

“‘Course he knows, girl. One of you just has to say it out loud.”

So Rey finds herself behind the dumpster in the rear of the club, hunched away from the door as groups shuffle past her in the parking lot. 

Jess had entered the number of the bar into the phone — “So you don’t misdial. All you gotta do is press call, alright?” — and left Rey with a single loose sweater to pull over her outfit. 

Rey stares at the phone number for a long time. Her eyes read nothing: no numbers or letters register in her mind. She feels as though she is looking into the mirror of her memories, trying to call up a picture of Clyde to hold in her mind when she calls. 

With a final, defiant stomp of her heel, she lets her finger push the green button and feels her heart beat in time with the ringing of the phone in her ear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's hope on the horizon ... Welcome to my favorite three chapters of the entire fic.
> 
> The next chapter will post on November 30th!
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/flybluejay_) ❤️
> 
> By [Cristina](https://twitter.com/ang3lview): More versions of this art on [this thread](https://twitter.com/flybluejay_/status/1326236186730352640?s=20) on Twitter.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Deliberately now, knowing she wants his attention, he lets his eyes linger up her body till he meets her gaze._
> 
> _“Yes, darlin’?”_
> 
> _“Clyde, aren’t you going to punish me?”_
> 
> _The very blood seems to freeze in his veins._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mind the updated tags!**

There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin

In the madness and soil of that sad earthly scene

Only then I am human, only then I am clean 

— [ “Take Me to Church” (Hozier) ](https://open.spotify.com/track/1CS7Sd1u5tWkstBhpssyjP)

[ Rey’s sweater ](https://di2ponv0v5otw.cloudfront.net/posts/2019/04/16/5cb60608248f7a47c6980512/m_5cb6062cffc2d471c75a0c1c.jpg)

* * *

There is only one great difference between the way Clyde drove home from the club last Friday and the way he drives there now. 

The night is still dark as ink, and his hands still abuse the steering wheel as he chokes it with unrestrained force. But this time Clyde drives with a single focus, never swerving to the right or to the left. His eyes are trained on the road ahead as far as the headlights stretch. 

He is following the path back to Rey.

The seconds feel like hours, and the minutes feel like days, yet it seems he has only blinked once before his headlights are bathing the back of the club in warmth, the neon drowned out with white. Couples and groups shuffle out of various entrances, and Clyde is just wondering whether he is allowed to enter the club again when the back door swings open.

 _Rey._

She has on a white oversized sweater hanging just low enough to cover her ass, and he is bowled over by that familiar boiling in his blood, struck again by just how perfect she is. She’s gripping the arm of a red-haired girl who seems to be scanning the parking lot for … 

The red-haired girl sees him and waves excitedly.

He watches her lean toward Rey and then look back at him. That’s when Rey finally looks up, and their eyes meet in the headlights. 

He doesn’t bother to kill the engine as he makes his way over, jaw screwed tight to the point of distorting his lips.

“I’m Jess,” the other girl starts, and then stops herself with a laugh. “Never thought this was how I’d be meetin’ Rey’s man, but … fuck, on second thought, I’m not that surprised after all.” She laughs.

All Clyde can see, all he can think about, is how exhausted Rey looks in Jess’ arms and how she’s tilted her head away to look at anything but him. 

“She’s our girl, ain’t she?” Jess smiles over at Rey. “Though I got a feeling she might just be _your_ girl now,” she adds in a low voice.

“Jess.” Rey finally speaks up, her tone reprimanding. The sound of her voice makes his heart beat faster. She continues avoiding Clyde’s eyes, turning instead to look at her friend. “Give me my duffel.” 

Jess ignores her and hands Clyde the bag. He grips it in his right hand, still staring down at Rey. “I made her brush her teeth just in case y’all get up to somethin’. I think the drinks are wearin’ off, but she still can’t walk real well, so —” 

Jess sure seems to care for Rey, but Clyde doesn’t have a second more of time he can waste. The clock has been ticking since the first night he met Rey, and there’s so much lost time he has to make up for since then.

He swings Rey into a bridal carry and drops the duffel bag in Rey’s lap before the other girl finishes speaking. Rey gasps, brow furrowed as she tries to figure which way is up. Her hands push against his pecs in an effort to create more space between their bodies, but Clyde’s mouth is set in as firm a line as Rey’s.

“Well, _alright,_ then.” Jess pauses to take in the sight of them, and Clyde meets her gaze without blinking, Rey caught in his arms. “You know, you haven’t said a word to me since you got here, but I can see why she trusts you.” She turns to head back toward the club. “Y’all have a good night now.” 

Jess’ voice floats back to them over her shoulder. “And Rey, I hope I don’t see you for a couple of days.”

Clyde doesn’t notice when the club door slams shut. He is frozen in the lot, absorbed with the feeling of having Rey’s full weight in his arms for the first time. 

With this newfound information, he now knows the different ways he could crush her, bend her, fold her body and fuse it into his until she can no longer do anything apart from him. 

He swallows a lump in his throat. 

“Clyde.” Rey’s accent bites on the vowels and consonants of his name. She looks up at him with a glare, a determined crease splitting her forehead.

As he lopes back to the truck, their combined weight makes his footfalls heavy. When he opens the driver-side door and sets her down behind the wheel, his arms are trembling — for what reason, he can’t say — and he knows the expression on his face is unreadable as he looms over her.

She immediately scrambles over the bench seat to the opposite side of the truck, cradling her stomach with her face toward the window. 

He has barely registered her separation from him before she blurts in an uneven voice, “Don’t come any closer.”

He is still standing outside the truck, and she is curled into the window on the other side with her heels tucked on the seat. All her makeup is still flawless, not a brush stroke out of place, but somehow she looks weary, and much older than her years. Her eyelashes flutter as she holds herself tense, so tense he feels like he is breathing for the both of them. 

Then she shifts, and the neck of her sweater droops to expose more of her bare skin — and suddenly Clyde is laser-focused on a bruise on her shoulder blade. 

He opens his mouth for the first time since he left Duck Tape. “What’s _that?”_

“What?” She follows his eyes and winces when she turns her head down too fast. _“Fuck,_ that hurts.”

She opens her eyes after keeping them closed for a second. “It’s nothing, I banged myself up in my kitchen —” She’s shouting something at him through the window, but he can’t hear her because he is already stalking around the front of the truck to open the door on her side. 

He yanks it open to the sight of her cold, perfect face. “I said it’s _nothing,_ Clyde,” she repeats angrily. 

“What. Happened?” he grinds out.

“I said I was in my kitchen, and if you’d been listening you’d —”

She immediately stops talking when he crowds her, her nose nearly touching his sternum as he towers above her. He’s almost denting the frame of the cab with his grip, and he’s fighting to redirect his strength onto something that _isn’t_ her body, but he doesn’t know how to do this, doesn’t know how to take care of her — 

_“Rey._ You been drinkin’.” 

She sits up straighter, and he refuses to let his eyes flick down to her legs. “And what’s it to you if I have?”

 _She can’t_ really _be asking that, can she?_ “You _know_ why, Rey.” 

“No, Clyde, I don’t. Why does it matter to you if I get pissed off my tits —”

“Don’t _make_ me, Rey.” His nostrils flare as he leans forward. “You said you knew you deserved it —”

“Deserve _what,_ Clyde? Why? _Why_ do I deserve it?” She is shouting at him now, fists balled as she yells into the night. 

“You _know_ why, Rey. ‘Cause you _belong_ —”

“Belong to me.” 

A shiver loosens down his spine as she breathes the words right along with him.

“I’ll tell you again,” she whispers fiercely, immediately. 

She isn’t touching him with her hands, isn’t touching him with her lips. The only thing touching him now is her voice, and it strokes down his body like her hips against his abs.

“No, Rey, I’ll —” 

“You belong —” she starts right away.

“— To me,” he blurts out hurriedly. 

Like always, he is rushing to catch up to her. 

He tries again, hunching over her. “You belong —”

“To me,” she interrupts. Her smile is growing brighter and wider by the second. 

_“Rey,”_ he warns. _Could she just sit still for one goddamn second?_

“Tell me.” Her smile is brilliant now. “Actually,” she shifts excitedly, “I’ll tell you.”

 _“No,_ Rey,” he replies, and his voice is firm. He cages her, hands landing behind her shoulders. “You have to let _me.”_

She opens her mouth, and then shuts it abruptly as she nods. 

She seems to come to some sort of understanding within herself, because her eyes close as though she is surrendering to a blessing. She looks deeply serene, like a river in the moonlight, and Clyde lets himself begin to drown in her peace. 

His Adam’s apple vibrates against her forehead as he stakes his claim. 

“Listen, baby girl. You belong to _me.”_

When he repeats the words again — _You belong to me_ _—_ she nods forcefully, nose bumping along the column of his throat.

When she pulls away, her eyes shine with moonlight and tears. “Why couldn’t I tell you that very first night?” she whispers. “Why couldn’t I just say that I was yours?”

It’s easy for Clyde’s heart to swell in sympathy for her, and not just because she lifts her hands behind his neck to pull him closer. He understands because words have always been tough for him, too. 

He can always find words, but they never seem to be _enough_ words for other people. So with his hand on her back and her cheek pressed into his heartbeat, he hopes what he says next can be enough for now.

“Rey. Sweetheart.” He pauses to think. 

“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

* * *

More time passes. He can’t rightly say how much. Outside, the number of cars in the lot has dwindled down to a mere handful. 

He finds himself perched on the passenger side of the seat, right leg stretched out against the open truck door to prop himself up and keep him from falling out. Rey is laid against him, heels grazing the driver-side door. Her eyes are open, trained on his sleeve as she runs a hand slowly along the fabric. 

He loves their newfound freedom outside the club: her heat against his with only the stars to see them. His eyes travel down her legs again and again, the edge of her sweater creeped up to a truly tantalizing height. Just under her sweater he sees a pair of jean shorts, so tiny he can see the entire curve of her ass against the seat. 

His mouth starts to water.

Suddenly, she sits up on her knees beside him. “Clyde?” 

The fat of her thighs spreads in that position, and her skin — the whole of her body — looks as smooth as cream, a velvet made to cover him, and oh, he wants to lick all of her once, twice, three times over. 

Deliberately now, knowing she wants his attention, he lets his eyes linger up her body till he meets her gaze. 

“Yes, darlin’?” 

“Clyde, aren’t you going to punish me?”

The very blood seems to freeze in his veins.

“I deserve it,” she reminds him.

Worried, he examines her face, but her voice and eyes look clear and … _eager._ Her hands rest insistently on his arm, as though begging for permission. She even has a mischievous smirk to one side of her mouth that makes his dick stiffen and his jeans feel tight. 

A question that’s been torturing him for weeks slips out.

“Rey. Baby girl … how old are you?” 

He braces himself for her answer.

“I’m twenty-one, Clyde.”

He flinches. _“Fuck.”_ His knuckles of his hand turn white where he’s gripping his thigh.

Her eyes narrow, and she never looks away from him, eyes steely as she says, “H-how old are you, Clyde?” 

_So brave, baby girl is being_ so _brave._

His pupils are completely black as he drags his gaze to her. 

With the greatest restraint he’s ever had in his life, he lets himself break. 

“I’m sorry, baby girl.” 

Her reply is cut off by the rough sounds of him standing and dragging her over the bench seat to bend her over it. He pins her ass with his pelvis, her hips out at an awkward angle because of her heels. 

His hands are halfway under her sweater when she gasps, “Wait, let me —” She peels off her heels and tosses them somewhere in the truck. 

Instead of giving her time to straighten out, he thrusts his right arm forward to keep her bowed over the seat.

Clyde can’t look away from how her toes stretch and dangle trying to find the asphalt. The only thing holding her up is his forearm against her back, and he’s never been closer to having her so completely at his mercy.

 _“Baby —”_ His voice breaks. “Your feet don’t touch the _fuckin’_ ground.” 

“I can feel how hard that makes you, darling.” She twists to look over at him, and her sweater falls aside to expose even more of her skin. “Does it make you want to come all over my ass?” 

“God _damn_ it _,_ Rey — _fuck,_ I’m —” He shoves his nose roughly into her bare shoulder and _squeezes_ all the way around her waist with his hands. 

“Clyde, ah — oh my _god!_ ” 

“Get —” He can’t form any kind of sentence anymore, can’t see shit through the hair in his face, so he works through it blind, belt buckle jingling before he drags his zipper down. He doesn’t bother to get his dick out, too desperate is he to pin her down and rut against her.

_“Uh, uh, uh, uh —”_

Her feet swing below them as he shoves and _shoves._ He watches her claw at the seat in a fruitless attempt to gain purchase on anything else, but the only thing holding her up are his hands bruising her waist and his covered cock pushing into her from behind. 

He feels just as dark as the devil himself, and with every longing pant she lets loose, he relishes in just how much he has her permission to feel that _dark._

 _“Yeah,_ man! Get that ass!”

Loud cheers and whooping come from a group walking by. One man points at Clyde and pumps his fist.

Clyde stops thrusting all of a sudden, too compromised to respond. Instead he huffs down at her back, the puffs of air leaving his mouth and nose so forcefully that they blow her hair across her back. 

Rey pushes and twists in his arms till she is looking up at him from her back. She immediately reaches her hands out to his face. Her sweater is still gaping off her bare shoulder, and all of Clyde’s thoughts are a jumble of hunger. 

_Baby. Pretty. Mine. Sweet._

“You’re taking me right in the open, darling, right where everyone can see us? You want everyone to see I belong to you?”

She has a perfect smile when she tugs on Clyde’s shirt, and when he comes closer, she slips her hands underneath.

She looks up at him tentatively just as her fingers brush the sweat of his bare muscle, and the sight of her touching him so carefully is enough to make him throw all caution to the wind. He lifts her off the seat and straight onto his crotch, and it’s like they read each other’s minds, the way her legs clench around his waist as he balances her between his hips and the outside of the truck.

He _still_ has his boxers on, doesn’t know how to roll his hips the way she does — doesn’t have an ounce of seduction in his repertoire beyond pure animal instinct — and yet the rhythm he beats with his hips against hers leaves her gasping the same way she’d had him gasping in the club. 

“Clyde! Clyde, _ahhhh,_ my _god_ —” 

The truck creaks steadily as he shoves her against it, and over the sound he finds his voice.

 _“My — girl —”_ He chokes and starts again. “My girl is out here — all hours of the night — gettin’ drunker than a skunk when any son of a bitch could …”

He stutters when her hands slide off his waist to hold his arms as they flex. She watches his muscles bulge, watches him pump her as he comes undone, and her eyes seem to widen in reverence at the sight. The edge of her fear against the edge of his lust only teases him to jackknife into her faster.

“Tonight is — _unnhh —_ the _last_ night — you get to behave like this.”

“Yes, daddy,” she breathes quickly.

_Daddy._

The truck shakes as he forces her up and down against the window.

“That’s right, baby girl — I gotta — punish you, baby,” he growls.

Her answering smirk and the way she _owns_ him with it makes his jaw tighten and lock with want. 

“You — _unnnh_ —” he groans weakly. There isn’t a damn thought in his head, except the thought that he needs to fuck her _right now_. 

He tries again. “You don’t — don’t get to come unless you’re on my cock.” 

“Clyde, _no —”_

The anger in his voice is real when he growls, “I don’t — _uhhh —_ wanna hear it, Rey.”

Her hands clench on his arms, mouth wide, in a panic.

“Let me come in your bed,” she gasps out suddenly.

His arms stop pumping her, and all his thoughts go white ... except for the thought of her in his bed.

_Long, bare legs in his sheets — warm tits in his mouth —_

He stares at her lips, crushing her to his waist as she continues.

“Let me come in your bed, while I’m on your cock.” 

The word _cock_ slips off her tongue like the tongue of the snake, and when she looks at him from below her lashes, Clyde is as entranced as Adam was by Eve. 

“Take me naked in your bed, and I’ll leave my cum all over your sheets.” She licks her lips. “And I won’t leave until you say I can.”

Whether she is devil or angel, he can’t rightly tell. But as he sets her in his truck and stumbles behind the wheel, he knows he’s duty-bound to follow her, and he doesn’t care if it’s to heaven or hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These babies are finally going to get what they deserve! Next chapter will post December 2nd.
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/flybluejay_) ❤️


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He’s never seen a person look as elated as Rey does when she sees the puckered flesh of his injury. But then again, he’s never taken off his new arm in front of anyone else before._
> 
> _No one has ever cared enough to insist that he be purely his broken self around them._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mind the updated tags!**

'Cause I could live by the light in your eyes

I'll unfold before you

Would have strung together

The very first words of a lifelong love letter 

— [ “I Choose You” (Sara Bareilles) ](https://open.spotify.com/track/7jJH8F3PHlNvxfqEAAfFDl?si=QUXCZ6_pTjiiUnsoyy0G-w)

* * *

“Clyde ... Clyde, _hurry,_ please!” 

Clyde never once lets his foot off the gas. He’s never broken 85 on this highway, but now the needle easily swings to 100. As the night begins to lighten, the truck squeals into the driveway a full fifteen minutes faster than it normally takes him coming home from the strip club.

“Clyde, _please,”_ Rey whines.

“Comin’.” His voice sounds breathy to his own ears as he unbuckles them both and yanks her over the seat. He stares down at her in his lap, brow concentrated as he loops his arms under her and nudges the car door open with his foot. “You’ll be comin’ real soon, baby girl.”

 _“Clyde!”_ she huffs, indignant. Her voice is high and her arms are tight around his neck as he carries her bridal-style to the door. Her mouth is drawn into a pout that Clyde wants to lick right off her, but she beats him to the punch, her lips and tongue and breath hot all over his neck as he fumbles with his keys.

 _“Unhhh.”_ He groans like a dying man as her tongue lands behind his ear, her free hand rubbing his biceps again and again. _“Uhhh_ … _Rey_ …” He’s sure the neighbors can hear him, but he couldn’t give less of a damn.

The key finally slots in the lock and he flings the door open with a bang, taking all of three strides to cover the distance from the front door to the kitchen table. 

He’s never fucked anyone on a table, never fucked anyone in that house to tell the truth, but he wants all the first times he has left in his life to be with Rey, and he’ll christen every flat surface of the damn house with her if it means he can have all of the rest of her first times.

Her lips have wandered from his neck to the V of his button-up, tugging at his buttons as she mouths insistently at the hollow of his throat. “Just hold on, baby girl,” he mutters, gripping the edge of the table to make sure it will hold before all but throwing her onto it. She shrieks with the suddenness of it, delighted.

He stares at her underneath him, breathing as loud as a horse. Her cheeks are flushed, white sweater riding up to reveal her flat stomach.

She blinks at him, eyes half-lidded like a cat’s as she toys with her hem. When she lifts the sweater up to the underside of her bare tits, she fingers the curve of them before dragging the hem back down, and Clyde can feel drool starting to pool in his mouth. The tiny movements of her ab muscles have captured his full attention, and he watches her stomach, hypnotized, till she breaks his reverie: “Waiting on something, darling? Somewhere you have to be?”

He brings the full force of his gaze to stare at her. Her eyes are dark with fear and something else as he drags his whole right hand down her stomach, spreading his fingers out on her pelvis before reaching her sex. 

His nostrils flare as he says, “Here. I gotta be right _here.”_

She nods frantically, pulling at his zipper, knees rising to her chest as she claws. _“Off_. Want these off.”

He unzips his pants with his prosthetic hand and he tugs her shorts off with the other before propping her left leg onto his shoulder. She wears a purple thong underneath, and he can almost see through the fabric to the skin of her pussy — _so soft, so tiny, just for me,_ his mind whispers. 

“Just for you, darling,” Rey echoes his thoughts. Her perceptive eyes stare straight into him, hooded with desire. “Only you.”

Clyde tightens his grip viciously on her leg over his shoulder. His eyes are wide as he takes her in, writhing beneath him. One of her hands absently caresses her own breast as he lowers one trembling finger of his right hand toward her. 

He slides her panties out of the way, and they both groan when his finger finally breaches her slit. She’s so wet that he’s immediately in up to the second knuckle. 

“God _damn,”_ he breathes. 

“‘M wet, Clyde. _So_ _wet_ for you.” 

Clyde can feel how his pupils have dilated, sure there must be only black in his eyes as he slides his finger in all the way. He feels how tightly her pussy grips him and fights the urge to let his eyes roll back, instead training them on her in what he knows must be a truly furious stare. 

But she knows him by now — knows his moods, strength, and anger — and so in response to his intensity she relaxes her thighs, lets her eyelids fall to half-mast, and drops two fingers to her clit. 

They begin to rock, Rey letting out a restrained _mmph_ every time the tip of his finger hits a spot deep inside her. 

Clyde prays she can understand why he has no voice, makes no noise. His heart is caught somewhere in his throat, cutting off every sound he might think of making so the gravity of the moment can fly unfettered into his soul. 

He adds a second finger, then a third, still making sure to hit the same exact spot that makes her clench with every thrust. 

The tops of his thighs hit the edge of the table so hard that it scrapes against the floor, sliding against the wall. 

“Clyde … Clyde, _please!”_

Suddenly, he hears a low rumble in the distance, growing louder as it comes closer. It sounds like a motorcycle … a car with a shot muffler … or is it … _him?_

He’s _growling_ at her like a damn bear in the woods.

He’s never touched his cock with the prosthetic hand, but he’s about to at least try gripping himself with it out of sheer desperation when he hears:

“Ah, ah, ah — ” 

_“Fuck,”_ he exhales, and his voice is too high, hair flying into his face as he shoves his fingers into her harder, harder, till —

There’s a knock on the door.

 _“Ahhhh!”_ Rey sighs _loud_ as she immediately starts to come. 

“Clyde!” It’s Jimmy.

Rey’s thighs around his waist are as tight as a vise when she lifts her whole back off the table. Her lips are parted in a glorious, long sigh, and Clyde keeps thrusting, never breaking rhythm as he keeps slamming his three fingers into her. 

His fingers are getting wetter and wetter with her cum, and he doesn’t expect he’ll ever move from this exact spot again, not for a hundred million dollars and certainly not for Jimmy or anyone else in the goddamn world. 

“Clyde! What the _hell_ is goin’ on in there?”

Clyde rips his fingers from her and pulls out his cock, blindly pushing it in the direction of Rey’s pussy. A drop of milky precum threatens to drip onto the floor, and he’s moving faster than he’s ever moved in his life, when he feels a second hand on his dick and raises his eyes to Rey biting her lip, hurriedly guiding him to her slit.

“I know you’re in there. I can see the truck out here — hell of a parking job by the way — now _answer_ the door!”

 _“Umm,”_ Rey gasps as his head breaches her. 

She is unimaginably tight, tight as a dream, but he’s been strong as an ox for as long as he can remember, and the power behind his first thrust plunges him halfway in.

“Fuck!” Rey yelps as he stretches her wide open. “Clyde _—_ ”

He can barely move inside her. For leverage he claps both hands onto the edge of the table around her hips and shoves his dick clear through to what feels like her spine. 

She immediately slides up the table, a little too far out of his reach.

“What the hell is he ... _Clyde!”_

_“Hold — on — darlin’ —”_

She grabs the edge of the table under her thighs, pulling her herself forward again. She is sliding toward him at the same time he is thrusting toward her, and their pelvises connect till it feels like they are one body. Clyde grabs her shoulders to keep splitting her at that exact same depth, possessed with the idea of maintaining that same unity with her at all costs.

“I’m comin’ around back, Clyde.” 

Jimmy’s voice is a warning, and Clyde’s hair is all over his face, but any effort that doesn’t put him as far down Rey’s pussy as possible is nothing more than a downright _waste_ of time, so he keeps shoving into her, hair completely blocking his view. Rey reaches up to try to brush some out of his eyes, and the new position brings his dick to a place even further inside her cunt.

“There, _right_ there, Clyde, oh my god …” 

With his prosthetic hand still gripping the table, he curls his right hand all the way around her back with a force that will definitely bruise. The thought of marking her for all the world to see makes his dick pulse out thicker in her pussy. She _clenches_ around him in response, and Clyde sees real live stars. 

Under their thrusting, the kitchen table squeaks and groans like the back of Jimmy’s pickup truck.

_Jimmy —_

“Clyde, you son of a bitch …” 

He dimly registers his brother muttering at the back screen door, but Clyde’s head never moves from where he is looking down at Rey through his hair. His eyebrows are knitted together, expression nothing less than murderous as he hammers them both home.

“Clyde — darling — Clyde —”

Her pussy walls are fluttering and Clyde knows she’s close. He is right behind her, heart flying out of his throat with how fast it’s beating. 

“I love you, Clyde … gonna come, darling … come with me, Clyde, _please_ come with me —”

He can hear the moment Jimmy realizes what’s going on.

“Holy _shi—”_

Clyde’s brain catches up.

_I love you._

Clyde _roars,_ his yell braying clear into the next county as he goes over the edge. He knows his neighbors five houses down can hear him, knows Jimmy’s eardrums are probably blown clear through, but he couldn’t care less because _Rey_ is beneath him, her own higher scream echoing after his as she clenches around his dick, milking him for all he’s worth.

He feels himself spurting, each squirt feeding more and more of his cum into Rey till he’s sure her entire cunt is pooled full of him.Every single muscle of his forehead, cheeks, and jaw has slackened into deep relaxation, but internally he crows at the feeling of their spend leaking down from where he is pressed into her thighs. 

She’s whimpering, clutching onto his shoulders as she continues spasming. He realizes his grip is iron and gently lowers her back down to the table, but not before she can swipe some of the hair out of his face. Some of the strands catch in the sweat on his forehead, and he knows he looks a mess, but she’s looking at him like he hung the moon, sun, and stars all together and he feels like a prince, having conquered the world with this panting, beautiful creature in his arms. 

“Bet you’re feelin’ pretty _good_ right about now, little brother.” Jimmy’s voice suddenly cuts in from behind the screen door. He sounds as smug as hell.

Rey laughs loudly, voice clear as a bell. She strokes Clyde’s arm, eyes brimming with adoration.

“What’cha say there — ” 

“Jimmy.” Clyde has had it. “Would you quit runnin’ your mouth for just … one … ” Clyde’s voice peters out as Rey wipes a few more strands of hair out of his eyes. His eyes never move from her face, his hands glued to her body as he slowly bends himself down to let her do it. 

Her eyes grow immeasurably soft as she realizes he has brought himself closer to help her.

“Clyde Logan.” One strand of his hair is tangled in her fingers. She plays with it as she murmurs, “You never cease to amaze me.”

His lips purse, eyes trained on her mouth. 

A moment of pure bliss as they study each other, then —

“What’cha say there, Miss Kira?”

“Jimmy. Do you _need_ somethin’?” Clyde is spitting. He knows he sounds madder than a bull, and Rey grins at his irritation. 

Jimmy’s voice floats through the door. “Just come to pick up the truck. Mellie said you took off early from the bar last night, but now I see you had somethin’ real _important_ to take care of.” 

From the sound of his voice, Jimmy’s grin is practically splitting his face in two, and Clyde is none too pleased. 

“Well, now you know where I am, so you can go on and _—”_

“Oh, I’m goin’, I’m goin’. Sure you’ll be _real_ busy the rest of the day anyway.” 

Clyde hears Jimmy take a couple steps, then: “By the way, if y’all use the truck for anythin’, be sure and clean it up when you’re done.” 

Rey giggles underneath him, and Clyde looks back down at her, framed between his arms, before lifting his head to look toward the screen door.

Jimmy continues, “I’ll make sure and tell Mellie you’re perfectly fine next time I see her —” 

“You ain’t tellin’ Mellie _nothin’ —”_

“Good-bye, Jimmy!” Rey suddenly calls out cheerfully from below him.

Clyde jerks his head back down to look at her in a panic, but she is already looking at him, a promise radiating from her eyes.

_Peace._

_Contentment._

_Love._

_Don’t be afraid._

“Bye now, miss!” It’s clear Jimmy is still grinning like a fool, but Clyde and Rey don’t even blink, don’t move their eyes from each other as Jimmy’s footsteps slowly fade away.

“We didn’t quite make it to the bed, did we?” She bites her lip, looking at him with those beautiful eyes. 

Clyde doesn’t say anything. His thoughts are a blur of _I love you_ and _Rey._

“Is this your house, then? Or do you share it with … is it Jimmy? Or Mellie?”

Clyde is still trying to grasp the fact that she’s not in his mind, and she’s not at the club. No, she’s _here,_ open below him, at his kitchen table. His siblings’ names are coming out of her mouth like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and he’s finally all the way inside her, claiming her in the way he’s always dreamed of. 

“Rey.” His voice is as rough as rocks. “This is your house. I share it with you.”

The living room is the next room over, and that’s exactly how far they make it before Clyde is bending her over the couch and pushing into her again. The blinds are pulled wide open, and anyone could see in from the street, but Rey doesn’t seem to care as she moans below him.

“Oh, _Clyde —_ I _love_ your house _—”_

In lieu of thanks, he silently pounds into her harder.

“I love the view — from this angle,” she smiles, and he’s too worked up to laugh at that, too deep in her body to want to ever come out.

Despite his best efforts, and Rey’s best efforts to clench around him, his cock is flagging and he quickly loses steam. It’s too soon after his first orgasm, and it’s been a long time since he was Rey’s age. 

So he carries her to the next room over so he can finally, _finally_ lay her in his bed.

Something is set loose in him, because instead of keeping his thoughts to himself, he finds he now has the power to breathe magic into reality — can now finally tell her the thoughts he’s had about her for _weeks._

“You’re gonna look so pretty in my bed, baby girl. Prettier than you look anywhere else.”

“Thank you, dear heart,” she murmurs into his neck. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

And when he finally lays her out, and she’s there, half-naked, he feels like every part of his body is trying to come except for his own cock, which hangs like a dead cat between his legs. He curses himself for getting older as he watches her roll to her knees and take her sweater off with her back to him … and of course she wears no bra underneath. 

She looks at him over her shoulder.

“Are you naked yet, darling? Come here, let me help you.”

The next thing he knows, he is seated on the bed, letting her unbutton his shirt. His eyes are glued on her bare tits as he sees them for the first time in the sunlight. 

She interrupts his perusal. “Let’s take this off, too.” Her voice is soft, and he tears his eyes away from her breasts to see where she’s looking. 

She’s stroking his left forearm above the metal of his prosthetic, and this was usually the part where a woman got nervous about him being incapable in bed. To everyone else, he’d say _That’s alright_ and _I’ll leave it on_ so they could feel like they were with a normal man.

But Rey doesn’t seem to want him to be normal. She just seems to want him to be himself. 

He doesn’t smile when he looks down at her, and his chest is bare, just like his heart before her. He manages to say, in a voice only slightly roughened by emotion: 

“‘Course, darlin’. You can have this arm, too.”

And then he shows her where the buttons are that help the metal slide off his stump, shows her how the mechanism detaches and pulls away from his skin. 

He’s never seen a person look as elated as Rey does when she sees the puckered flesh of his injury. But then again, he’s never taken off his new arm in front of anyone else before. 

No one has ever cared enough to insist that he be purely his broken self around them.

She kisses the skin of his long-gone arm, kisses the places of pain that everyone else has forgotten about, and then she kisses all the way up his arm till his head is turned to her and his nose butts against her throat.

Then he’s laying her down, turning her over, pressing her into him even as she scrambles back up. “Your pants!” she laughs with joy, and she pulls them down along with his boxers, and then he’s ... free.

Free with her, completely naked and happy, for the first time in this life wholly seen by a woman. And what a woman she is, this woman who sees him as whole. 

She seems to be murmuring as her lips and nose move all over his face, yet the room is completely silent save for their soft intakes of breath and the subtle rustling of the sheets as they move: Rey mouthing over his cheekbones and jaw as Clyde slowly, gradually, unfolds onto his back from where he was curled on his side. He lets her hands caress his shoulders and chest till she reaches his hips, his pelvis, what was left of his left arm. With a gentle hand, she strokes him everywhere, celebrating his body the same way he had done to her.

He knows she is soothing him, even though he has never soothed her in the same way. He has insisted on being near her, fought and clawed to get to worship her, but he had never prayed over her body the way she was praying over his now: breathing love into each scar and crevice, brushing grace with her lips over the marks of his flesh and heart. 

They lay there as the sun continues to rise, the morning light shining in through the window on a man at peace and the woman who carried him there.

* * *

Clyde’s eyes open sometime later. It could be afternoon or early evening, but between his hunger to keep himself inside her every second he’s awake, and his hunger to crush her between his arms as he falls asleep, he can hardly be bothered to check what time his alarm clock shows. 

All he knows is that time passes differently when he’s with Rey. Minutes become hours, hours become minutes, and the only sun he knows is her smile beaming back at him.

But something is different this time he wakes up. The room is a strange color, and no longer full of sunlight. It takes him a second to blink down and realize that the only thing he’s wrapped around is — nothing. 

He is naked and uncovered, and his mind immediately returns to the last time he felt this vulnerable, being on his back: the desert air swept out from under him, blood pouring from the inside out … 

But worse than last time, he can’t hear or sense another person anywhere near him.

He panics. Immediately he starts thrashing at the air till the sheets fall off the foot of his bed.

 _She left him. She left him while he was sleeping, and she’s not coming back, because why would she? He’s broken, and it’s his curse, the way he loved her too selfishly …_

“Clyde?”

Her voice arrests him like cold water down his back. An inhuman noise comes out of his throat, and he trembles at the frenzy of his heart experiencing fear and elation at the same time. 

“I’m here, darling. I’m right here. I haven’t left.” 

And then he feels her laying herself over his body so her torso presses against his chest. At the same time that he feels the first press of her nipples against him, he also feels a tear of relief slide into his hair.

He’d let more tears fall, but it’s been so long since he’s cried, he’d forgotten his body was able to do it till Rey taught him again just now.

“I won’t do it again, darling.” Her eagerness to calm him bleeds through her fingers as she strokes his cheek. “I promise I won’t do it again.”

He stares at the ceiling, trying to breathe through his pounding heart. 

Somewhere, his mind understands that they simply rolled away from each other in their sleep — that it was no one’s fault, that it was a simple mistake. 

But the other part of his mind tells him unrelentingly that she wants to leave him, that she’ll love him and leave him on purpose, and that he’ll never be able to find her again. 

_“Rey.”_ His voice is so thick, it barely sounds like her name.

He feels her suddenly pull away. He knows it’s only just to adjust her body even closer against his side, but he immediately lifts onto his elbow to press her hurriedly back down. 

She falls face up, prone and exposed, and he swings himself off the bed to yank her spread legs to the edge of the mattress. From his knees, he pulls her ass cheeks apart with his right hand and slots his face into her pussy without hesitation, stroking blindly with his nose and lips as she holds his head down to keep him there.

He’s too keyed up to take care of her, too vulnerable to put her first, so he just rubs his face all over her sex to comfort himself — and she lets him. 

She lets him glare at her, eyes angry and accusing as he repeatedly forces his nose into her dripping slit, as though his nose is what’s supposed to go in instead of his dick. 

She lets him abuse her hips with his mouth as he bites and pulls too hard. 

She lets him climb onto the bed and push her legs wide open with his hand and his stump till, despite her practiced splits, her knees tremble with how hard he makes her hold the stretch. 

And yet she says nothing, even as he starts to force her open with his dick, his whole body balanced over her as he takes her in his bed for the very first time. She just watches him patiently, biting her lip in sympathetic pain as he digs into her, hard and searching even though he never really lost her.

As he pushes in, the cries that slip from his heart are cries he didn’t know he had buried inside him.

“Rey,” he calls, even as she’s right below him. 

“Rey,” he pleads, even as he’s shoved too far inside.

His right hand is on the headboard, his stump resting on the mattress, and both his arms shake when he traps her underneath him. He pushes and pushes all the way through her body — wedges himself in as deep as he can go, and then _more._

His eyes, so bewildered, settle on her face as he thrusts. The confusion and hurt don’t leave his expression.

“Please _don’t,”_ he begs. “Please, _no,_ baby girl.”

He can finally get out the question he had to ask five minutes ago.

_“Why did you leave me?”_

When he looks down at her, her eyes are merciful, even as he’s rocking her so hard that her tits bounce furiously. 

“Just for a little while, dear heart. I won’t do it again.” She cradles him with her voice, her tone calm and imploring. 

“Rey —” His shouts get more and more fierce, and the bed scrapes the wall with each of his thrusts. He can feel her resisting, her inner walls tightening drily, even as she reaches out a hand to pull his torso flush against hers.

In the end, he is bellowing her name with every push of his hips. 

_“Rey!”_

“You’re right inside me, darling. You’re right here, Clyde.”

She is soft and pliant beneath him, repeating to him where he is as he forces himself into her again and again. 

The fear of losing her finally tears his selfishness from his throat.

 _“Take — sweetheart_ _— take —”_

He can’t even finish his sentence. 

He comes almost without realizing, head falling on the pillow by her face. Like a rag doll, his head lolls up and down as he spasms. His hair shifts all around her till the shocks run their course, and he feels a bone-deep weariness all the way to the tips of his toes.

It’s only a minute later when he falls asleep to the sound of Rey’s voice next to him — his chin resting on her forehead, still sheathed safely inside her body.

“I’ve got you, darling. You’re right here, love.”

Much later he’d remember that she whispered, _“I’ll protect you.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a comment if there was anything you enjoyed! The last chapter will post December 4th. 
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/flybluejay_) ❤️


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Clyde knew it was unfair — a downright_ injustice, _the way she gave herself to him — but he also knew at his core he was wickedly selfish. So he did his level best to make sure the whole world knew the princess belonged to him._

Estoy enamorado de tu vida, estoy enamorado de tu amor

 _I’m in love with your life_ , _I’m in love with your love_

Y empiezo a revivir en mi memoria la gloria que le has dado a mi vivir 

_And in my memory I bring back to life again and again the glory you give to my every day_

_—_ [ “Cuando voy por la calle” (Trio America, translation mine) ](https://open.spotify.com/track/148dqD9M7AcOBHWWtU1N2k?si=520JWsEMQzSe-uyQCPSmUA)

* * *

When Rey wakes up, Clyde is still asleep. Her leg is draped over him and they are facing each other, mere centimeters apart. She feels a ridiculous amount of glee at being able to observe him at her leisure. 

He snores very lightly and sleeps with his mouth open, a fact made all the more adorable when she remembers how determinedly he sets his jaw when he’s awake. His dick is hard and insistent and pushing between them, and the two of them are breathing in perfect sync with each other. 

Rey can’t look away as time flows above them, passing them by.

Her eyes trace the bump in the bridge of his nose, the roughly cut brush of his beard and mustache, and the way the light pouring in makes his skin seem almost translucent. She follows the line of his dark, dark hair down his shoulders and his muscled, bare arm, which is curled into him as Rey presses against it. 

She stares for a long time at his amputated forearm, letting her mind wander with thoughts she saves just for herself, for later. She takes her time, too, combing her fingers through the hair at his pelvis, noting how coarse and dark the curls are as she gently holds his erection out of the way.

When she brings her eyes back up to his face, Clyde is awake and looking at her. He is bathed in the sunlight reflecting off the sheets, and it brings out the gold around the brown of his irises in a way she’d never seen before. 

She blushes, overwhelmed by the look in his eyes. 

“Mornin’,” he mumbles, voice rough with sleep.

“Good morning,” she replies, brushing her fingers over his chest.

“Rey. I —” He swallows, starts again. “I love you, too, baby girl.”

Immediately her eyes well up with tears.

Her nose must’ve reddened, because his eyes light up with something like worry and he starts to lift toward her, till she wipes her eyes and assures him brokenly, “I’m perfect, love. Never been better.” 

“You sleep alright?” he asks her, still concerned.

“The best sleep I’ve had in a long time,” she whispers. As she speaks, she finally looks straight into his eyes.

She’d never be sure which one of them moved first, but after a moment, her leg is between his thighs and her lips are between his, except unlike their first kiss in the club, these kisses are so slow and indulgent, Rey almost falls asleep in the middle of each one. 

The full pads of his lips lift and separate her own, and with one hand on his neck, she feels how his muscles tense to angle his tongue more fully into her. She keeps her eyes open to watch him, and her heart floods as she sees his own eyes are shut tight as he lays claim to her with only his mouth.

He pulls back to look at her only after she goes limp from joy. “You sure you’re alright, darlin’?”

Despite the tear that slips down her cheek, her voice doesn’t waver when she speaks. “Can you tell me again, Clyde?”

And yet neither of them say anything as Rey immediately lifts her lips to his, kissing him as more of her tears fall between them. 

They don’t exchange any more words as she lowers a hand down to his hardness, as she presses her breasts against him and opens her legs to his thigh. Somehow he knows to roll her over so he ends up on top, knows to cradle her within his arms till his spread palm stretches the width of her back. Instead of their voices, the words are whispered all around them: in the strength Rey uses to bruise Clyde’s shoulders as she holds on, the decisive and tender grip with which he pushes himself into her, and the way he climaxes after less than a minute of deliberate, heavy thrusts. 

He looks helplessly at her, face pained and red as he comes, and she nods desperately to assure him she feels just the same way.

And still neither of them say the words that are everywhere in the room. It feels as though everything that needs to be said has been said from now till the end of time, and there is just he and her, she and him, forever and ever till the stars have to die.

* * *

Of course, the peace has a cost. But Rey has been preparing her whole life to pay it.

Some time later she feels what seems to be a nose placed in her hair and hears a few faint, murmured words _,_ so quiet she’s almost sure she’s imagined them. 

Her heart is so full that her own contentment lulls her back to sleep.

Then, a little while after, she’s being picked up with a blanket wrapped around her and deposited on what feels like a couch. 

She dozes, fully assured of life’s ability to give her what she needs. 

The sound of pans and dishes scraping wakes her up. She opens her eyes to the morning light and sits up, naked from head to toe, before she realizes the blinds are open. She wraps the blanket loosely over her body.

Her duffel is lying next to the couch, and she rummages around in it for her phone. 

Jess picks up after four or five rings. 

“Jess — yes, I’m perfect — yes, he —” She holds the phone away from her ear as the other girl screeches.

“You can’t possibly have this much energy this early, it’s — oh my god. It’s ten thirty in the morning.” Rey claps a hand over her mouth and stares at the clock on the wall. 

Her mind races as she keeps talking to Jess. “Did she say anything?” She slides her leg out from under the blanket to let the sun warm it as she listens, occasionally murmuring _mm-hmm_ and _yes_ as she looks out the window.

“Tell her I’ll call to schedule something and make up for it.” She bites her lip, mentally calculating. “I can come in for an earlier shift tomorrow. She’ll love that.” 

She blushes as Jess asks her something else. “It was the most wonderful — No, of course not, I hardly had time to before we — for heaven’s sake, Jess, you’ve _got_ to stop screaming in my ear.” Rey feels her body warm as she laughs at her friend. 

Suddenly, the conversation turns serious. “Perfect, Jess, he’s perfect, and —”

Just then, she turns her head to see Clyde watching her from the doorway, his expression blank. His feet are bare and his hair is a bit tousled around his head, and she smiles so wide she feels it splitting her cheeks. “I have to call you back, Jess. Uh-huh. I’ll text you.” She taps her phone to end the call and beams up at him, clutching the blanket to cover herself for a reason she doesn’t yet understand. 

She holds out a hand toward him. “Darling —” 

He interrupts. “How do you like your bacon?” His accent sounds oddly accusatory to her ears, and she recoils when he doesn’t reach back for her. 

“Um.” She bites her lip, thinking. “Crispy would be brilliant,” she says hesitantly. 

He stalks off without a reply.

She has an idea of what could be wrong.

The blanket drags along the floor as she carries it with her to the kitchen. 

“Clyde?”

He doesn’t answer, but she hears a kitchen utensil scrape harder than strictly necessary against the pan.

“Clyde.”

He stops moving and just stands at the stove, eyes fixed downward.

Her first instinct is to wrap her arms around him to let her naked body press against the shirt on his back, but she trusts too much in her love for him, doesn’t want to use her powers for evil, so she stays by the kitchen table, hand tracing the surface.

“How do you like _your_ bacon, Clyde?” she offers humbly, tentatively. 

He doesn’t answer — just stares down at the pan, arms by his side. 

Suddenly, she notices that her purple thong has been picked up off the ground and set thoughtfully on the countertop. She takes it into her hand, looking longingly at Clyde’s back.

“You know, I bought this,” she begins, “during my first year stripping in England. I was just sixteen years old then. Sixteen ...” She rolls her lips, remembering. “Can you imagine?” 

“No, I can’t,” he replies tersely. The volume of his voice is so low, she almost doesn’t catch it.

“Well, that’s how old I was,” she tells him quietly. “Stripping’s all I’ve ever known,” she adds in the same slow voice.

“Well, you can always learn somethin’ new,” he says, voice harsher and firm.

For a moment the two of them stand with their heads turned down, Clyde staring unseeing into the bacon, and Rey staring down into the thong under her palm. 

She’s finding it harder to let go than she thought, so she makes one last attempt, pushing to see how much he really understands.

“You know, one reason I started to dance is because the only memory I have of my parents is my dad dancing with my mum. Somewhere … a kitchen, a living room maybe.” She takes a moment to breathe in through her nose before continuing. “They were smiling and laughing. I don’t know where it was.” She tilts her chin up slightly, hardening her shoulders. “They were gone before I could remember anything else.”

Clyde has turned his head toward her now, as though to show her he is listening, but he still doesn’t meet her eyes.

She sets the thong back on the table and shuffles toward him in the blanket.

“Will you dance with me, Clyde?”

“I can’t,” he says immediately, robotically.

She continues as though she hadn’t heard him. “You know, it’s always amazed me how a dancer’s body seems to speak without words.” And you know, your body, Clyde,” she swallows quickly, “it speaks so much. It speaks to _me.”_

Finally, he looks at her, and the heartbreak she sees behind his eyes temporarily devastates her.

“Well, I’m not _like_ you, Rey.” He sounds somewhat regretful, and her heart dips between sorrow and relief.

“I know you’re not, and that’s why I love —”

“Why can’t you just tell me that you’re gonna — ”

“I’m _going_ to, Clyde! I’m going to.” She avoids his eyes as she tries to compose herself. Clyde does the same, turning his head down to the pan and away from her. 

“I just need you to understand that it _costs_ me something.” She’s insistent, standing there, in her blanket and her nakedness and her fear. “It _costs_ me something to leave. To … to stop stripping.”

“Don’t want you to go back there,” he tells the bacon forlornly.

“Won’t you look at me, Clyde?” she says hopefully, tenderly. 

The words bring him back, and he turns to look down at her. She sees now that his brow is blank with intense thought, and his lips are pursed in such a frown that it looks as though he is pouting.

She brings a hand up to set a strand of his hair in place. He doesn’t move a muscle, but the light coming in through the window shifts, and suddenly she can read the desperation in the brown of his eyes, the confusion and uncertainty and questioning that was previously hidden in shadow.

She takes one last deep breath before asking him what she knows will be a difficult question.

“Can you give me a week?” 

Neither of them breathe.

“I won’t take any requests for private rooms. I’ll stay on the stage as much as possible, and I won’t let any of them touch me.” 

Despite her best efforts to soften the blow, he stiffens. Her heart breaks, and she curses herself for a fool, but she plows ahead anyway, knowing her stubbornness is one of the reasons he loves her.

“Just one last week to finish dancing, and then I’ll never dance for anyone ever again.” 

With a very quiet voice, Clyde concedes. “You can dance for me.”

 _“Yes.”_ Her voice breaks. She clutches the countertop till her fingers turn white. _“Yes,_ I’ll dance for you, love.” 

“I don’t want you to go back,” he repeats, in a voice that is as gentle as her hand on his cheek. His eyes meet hers to plead as he looks into her heart. 

She prays that he can see what she knows is there. “I’ll come back to you. Every night, I’ll come back. Just to you.” She takes another deep breath, pleading with him. “I promise, Clyde.”

She kisses his stump before wrapping her hand around it and letting the blanket drop to the floor. She leads him to the kitchen table and takes a seat on it as he stands between her legs, erection already clearly visible in his shorts. 

His eyes are trained on her collarbone and her bare breasts beneath that, but when she slips a hand down to his cock to rub him through the cloth, his eyes lower even further to her cunt, hairless and still puffy and swollen from everything they’d been doing the night before. Clyde doesn’t look up to meet her eyes, but as Rey watches him, she sees his pupils dilate till the whole eye is almost black.

Then she hears him begin to breathe more loudly through his nose as she drags her fingers over the long, hard bulge in his shorts.

He blows an especially hard puff of air when she unzips him and slips her hand inside, stroking up and down through the warm fabric.

She hums sympathetically when she feels a wet spot of precum through the thick cloth of his boxers. 

He huffs out another loud puff of air, and the warmth of his breath hits her forehead. When she looks up into his eyes, his features are once again too savage, too intense, and she smiles at the familiar face of the fierceness of his desire for her.

She carefully pulls him out and watches his face the whole time, reveling in the tiny movements of his eye muscles and the corners of his mouth as she goes.

Then she watches the sharp jolting of his shoulders and spine when she slips his red, erect tip into the mouth of her pussy. She can’t help the sharp intake of breath she makes when he splits her, nor can Clyde seem to help the inhuman noise _he_ makes when she holds only his tip inside.

“I’ll keep you … right here,” she starts, eyes hooded as she slowly clenches around him. “Keep you right inside me … all the time —” She interrupts herself with a gasp when she feels the very edge of him pulse inside her.

_“Hunnhhh. Uhhh …”_

And just like that, he is once again beyond words.

Rey is not faring much better once she looks down at his cock, huge and dark and resting mostly outside of her body. 

Then she sees Clyde’s right hand shaking as he holds onto the table — sees how much effort he is putting into not thrusting forward. When she looks up at him, his eyes are wild with terror, like the black of his pupils is about to swallow him whole. His lips even seem to tremble as he holds himself just outside her.

Rey is barely hanging on as it is, but she wants to give him absolutely everything she has, so she leans back and lifts her knees slightly toward her chest before sliding a finger over her clit. 

_“Fu-fuck,”_ he exhales, voice breaking in the middle. 

“Just watch me, darling.” She bites her lip as he shakes like a leaf above her. “I’ll let you move … in just a moment ...” A sigh of pleasure slips out of her as she rubs, and she clenches on him reflexively.

A strangled groan escapes his throat, but Rey is starting to be too far gone to attend to him, the temptation to slide herself forward on him becoming far too strong. 

_“Oh,_ Clyde … _Clyde,_ please _…”_ The skin of her lip almost breaks with how hard she is biting down on it. “Look how … _ahhhh …_ how much I _need_ you, Clyde …” 

Her finger traces his name over her clit, and somehow he seems to know, because suddenly the table she is seated on wobbles violently. She realizes he has grabbed the edge of it again in another terrifying hold, rattling it back and forth under her in an effort to force her hand. 

His shaking slides him deeper into her by a fraction of an inch, and the whole kitchen fills with the sound of his moan. “Oh, _fu-uhhh,_ _Rey …”_ He drags out her name as she gasps at the feeling of him.

 _“Mhmm,”_ she agrees breathily. _“Oh,_ Clyde, please — _please_ —”

He shoves his forehead against hers and begins to push her with his head as she continues to rub. His eyes are directed downward, and she can’t see his expression, but she can hear a faint growl as he glares down at her finger working herself faster. Their bodies swing back and forth, Rey’s back curved to meet his head with her forehead as the table once again squeaks in time with their movements.

Then his right hand lets go of the table before he _slams_ it back down.

Rey jumps at the sound. She looks hurriedly into his eyes as she strokes, and the aggression she sees there makes her lips part in awe. 

She knows he has no words, but his meaning is crystal clear, so her hand speeds up as she hurries to give him her permission to let himself loose.

“Put it in me, Clyde — _please,_ god, put it in me —”

She has only just opened her mouth to sigh out her orgasm when her words hit him and he pushes all the way in. Her cunt, ready to clench on empty air, spasms furiously when she feels the full length of him pouring through her, prodding her open from the inside out.

His hair swings above her as he pushes his chin over her head and fucks her through her pleasure. Her hands come up to grab his shoulders, and her mouth is caught at his neck, so she licks and sucks with reckless abandon as his hips buck back and forth, banging the table against the wall.

Once again she is struck by his animal grace, the way his body adopts a fevered tempo of its own as he lurches against her and the table in his hurry. The rhythm with which he takes her is unerringly strong and steady, and just as she did last night, she lets herself fall securely into the current of his intensity. 

He comes with a choked gasp, hips twitching against her as his head freezes above her. She feels his neck, dripping with sweat, and slides her hand under his shirt to feel the wetness there, too.

“I love you,” she reminds him, whispering into his ear, and he seems to shake a bit harder, the mop of his hair quivering under her lips.

A sharp, crackling sound pierces their reverie.

“Oh, _god.”_ Rey laughs exaggeratedly. “We’ve let the bacon burn.” She smiles up at him, but he only looks back at her with a very serious expression, face still colored from exertion. When he speaks, his voice is raw and husky.

“That’s alright. That’s how I like it.”

* * *

Despite having traveled the world and lived in terrible conditions, Clyde would swear that the hardest week of his life was Rey’s last week of stripping.

Before Rey, he would’ve said the hardest thing in the world was something like becoming a pilot or finding the cure to cancer. But now he knew: the hardest thing in the world was waking up next to Rey.

The hardest thing in the world was doing everything by her side, feeling the light of her smile and her shoulder next to his, and then letting her leave him with the only thing he could hold onto: the hope against hope that she would somehow want to come back.

He knew what he was. He knew what his life was. And she was like a princess, a fairy queen in one of his books. So why a princess had decided to walk among men, and not just walk among them, but to call herself _his,_ was more incomprehensible than anything his mind could account for or defend.

Clyde knew it was unfair — a downright _injustice,_ the way she gave herself to him — but he also knew at his core he was wickedly selfish. So he did his level best to make sure the whole world knew the princess belonged to him. 

Every afternoon, before they both had to go to work, they would bring boxes to her old apartment and fill them with her things to bring them back to their house. But the two of them only seemed to be able to make one trip a day, mainly due to the fact Rey had an endless supply of shorts and skirts: she said she liked to keep her legs free to dance whenever she wanted.

On the drive back home, Clyde would keep his right hand on her bare thigh, and she would twist in the seat to watch him stare conscientiously out the front window. 

They would park, and he’d let her walk through the door first, and then he would set the box down on the counter, or, depending what was inside, let it bang onto the floor before he would rush forward and crowd her. His nose would sink into her hair from behind as she’d shriek beneath him, and then she’d twist in his arms to reach for the buckle of his belt and grin impishly against his lips before opening her mouth to his. 

He couldn’t think of a better, more perfect use for the plodding nature of his methodical mind, the way he made sure to take her first against every wall and then every horizontal surface of the house, till he could no longer look around the place without knowing for certain that he and Rey had consecrated every inch of it together. 

Once, he watched her undress in the bathroom. He could tell she didn’t mean for the sight to be seen by anyone besides herself. She dragged her top over her head very quickly and roughly, let her breasts bounce while she examined them in the mirror. She pulled her hair out of its ponytail with efficiency and without grace. 

He sat on the bed and watched, hungrily, those movements meant for her eyes only, till she noticed him behind her, reflected in the mirror. She froze for a second, her hands halted on the lip of her shorts, and then she slid them down more deliberately, but still without sexiness or exaggeration. He watched as she rubbed lotion on her collarbones and neck, the smell stretching out to tickle his nostrils. 

She rubbed the same lotion on his cock before bouncing herself up and down it, her hands resting reassuringly on his shoulders. 

He’d promised himself he’d always keep himself strong enough to take her and fuck her anywhere, at any time, but there were a couple days and nights when his libido didn’t quite rise, and on those days they sat on the couch and did absolutely nothing at all: Rey thumbed through his books while his eyes followed her, staring; or she sat between his arms and played with his hair as he observed the individual muscles of her face. 

She accepted without judgment the quietness of his life, and Clyde couldn’t bring himself to complain about the flowers and leaves he started to find strewn about the house, her fingertips written all over them — for under her touch, he, too, had become one of those wild and beautiful things.

After a blissful few hours spent following each other around like puppies, the sun would fade, and then she would leave to go to the club.

Some nights he tried to keep himself distracted at the bar, hands occupied just enough to keep his mind from spiraling too quickly. But when he wasn’t mixing a drink, he’d stare daggers down the bar and talk to no one for _hours,_ till Earl would tell him to go sit in the office if he was going to give everyone the stink eye. 

Every once in a while a woman would laugh a certain way, and under the bar Clyde’s mechanical hand would whir and clench till the wood scratched or a bottle broke.

Jimmy always kept one eye on him on those nights, as though he was aware that Clyde could burst into flame at any second.

Then there were the nights when he was home alone and waiting …

He’d sit motionless in the kitchen till the sun went down, hands wrapped around a mug and staring unblinkingly at the door. There he’d stay, like a pharaoh in a tomb, darkness bound around his body like a cloth that kept him still, till the microwave clock read some time a little after midnight. Then he’d set the mug in the sink and open the front door to stand inside the doorframe, still keeping the entire house in shadow except for the light shining from their bedroom window. 

He always kept the lights on and the curtains open in that room so the bed was visible.

He knew it might be cruel, and mighty ugly of him to be so jealous, but he never wanted to lie to her about his selfish nature: he had to let her know where he expected her to be. 

Her car would pull up and she would get out, heels clacking on the concrete and oversized sweater swinging down to her mid-thigh. That first night, she ran to him and threw her arms around his neck. He twisted her inside and shut the door and fucked her right against it standing up. He couldn’t see her face over his shoulder as he snapped his hips into her and growled in her ear, but there she hung, supple and whispering his name, as she let him fuck away the fear. 

The rest of the nights, he waited for her inside the open door frame till she climbed out of her car and slipped past him in the shadows, duffel bag heavy on her shoulder. He would follow her through the kitchen and trail behind her all the way to their bedroom, where she would drop her bag and wait for him to come loping in like a predator to his prey.

He’d never let her sleep with a single scrap of clothing on — not if he could do a damned thing about it. 

Together, they’d undress both her and him, with metal and skin and desperate breathing, till the last bit of fabric lay on the floor next to his prosthetic arm and she was settled neatly around his painfully erect cock as he sat shuddering on the edge of the bed. 

There were a couple nights that her heels never made it off, and her legs would be by her ears or around his waist as the full length of his body stretched like a bowstring above her. 

On the second to last night, he was moving toward the bedroom, eyes almost completely lidded at the thought of the lingerie he’d caught a glimpse of as she passed, when he walked in to the sight of Rey on her hands and knees, two fingers working herself breathlessly as her head rested on the pillow and her lips sighed his name. Her ass was higher than he’d ever seen it, and her heels were high and strappy and dirtying the bed. They were also red to match the string of lingerie that was quickly getting soaked in her slit.

That night Clyde came so hard he passed out before his head hit the pillow.

He didn’t like thinking about how ornery it made him that he couldn’t fuck her hard enough to fuck the other men right out of her. Rey sensed this about him without him ever saying it, and she would murmur _dear heart_ to him as he dominated her violently, ferociously. Every morning, noon, and midnight she told him how she thought about him as she danced: told him her favorite parts about his body and soul and promised him she’d lay with him forever, just as soon as the week was up. 

His only acknowledgement of her words took the form of him grunting raggedly against her as he came. 

He would wake in the late morning with her body tangled in his sheets and the smell of her perfume from the night before still lingering. Most mornings he was pathetically, breathtakingly hard. He would push his cock in her softness, push his heart into her hands, and then he would push and _push_ and spill as much of himself into her as he could so that anyone who looked at her would be looking at _him,_ painted inside her on all of her walls. 

His eyes would glow with unholy fire as he’d watch her carefully swipe their combined spend back in, one leg between both of his as her fingers entered her own pussy.

Some mornings he made her wail, or she would make him yell. That first morning, his neighbors knocked on the door, and Rey told him they’d had worried looks on their faces. She had rushed, panting and laughing, to throw one of his band T-shirts over her bare body before she answered it, because he lay red-faced on the bed, spread-eagled and far too compromised to move. 

The mornings after that, no one knocked on their door whenever she’d scream his name into the sunrise.

Then the next day they would do it all over again — till the morning after her very last night at the club.

That morning is another morning his dick won’t stay up, so he just lays there for a spell, staring at the sun on the ceiling as Rey snores lightly with her arm wrapped around him. 

It had only been a week ago, but it feels like a lifetime and more since the first night he woke up with her in his bed, and she asked him to let her take a week to stop stripping. In that week, he’d been patient, he’d suffered — _lord,_ how he’d suffered — but he’d be damned if he suffered a second more. 

Like that first morning, he whispers a not-very-quiet _baby girl_ into her hair, then wraps a sheet around her before cradling her onto the couch again. He turns on the burner to heat up a pan, and then he moves back to the doorway just to watch her breathe while she’s asleep. 

Not in a thousand years will he ever be able to believe his good luck.

Something about the way her hair falls haloed around her face; something about the way the sheet doesn’t cover both of her tits; something about the way her right arm is thrown up by her head … all of it has him thinking that it was finally time.

He kneels beside the couch and stares at her for countless minutes. She senses him somehow, even in her sleep, and gradually, owlishly, she blinks open her eyes. Her smile is tired when it lands on him. 

There is a great big lump in his throat because he is overwhelmed.

“Sweetheart.” Her voice is thick and grainy with sleep. She puts a hand on his chest and sits up more. Her eyes meet his, warm and fraught with light.

“It’s over, Clyde. I’m done. Forever.” Her mouth curls around the word as she looks at him expectantly. 

“Rey.” He stops to take in the sight of her, naked and stilled in waking repose.

“Baby girl.” He clenches his jaw. “I gotta ask you somethin’.”

* * *

“Oh, he _loves_ these!” 

Mellie’s voice startles Rey out of her thoughts as the other girl holds up a jar of something red and sweet. 

As Mellie places the jar in the grocery store trolley, Rey unwraps her arms from where she had unknowingly been hugging herself, lost in a memory.

Mellie adds, “I think this was one of the things he missed most when he was in Iraq.” 

Rey nods knowingly. “That’s what he told me last week. I told him I’d never had one of those in my life, and he looked like he was about to laugh at me!”

Mellie grins. “That’s ‘cause he _was_ laughin’ at you. Everybody and their mama _loves_ to have ‘em at picnics.”

“Not me.” Rey makes a face as she adds another box to the trolley. “But I’ve always been told I’m a bit different to everyone here.”

“That’s why he likes you. Well, one of the reasons.” Rey can’t help flushing when she returns Mellie’s gaze. The other girl is looking at her intently — smiling, like Clyde, with just her eyes and the corners of her mouth.

“I’m gonna get somethin’ on the other aisle. Be right back.” Mellie heads around the corner as Rey crouches to get a box of tea from the bottom shelf. 

_Perhaps an herbal tea would help this indigestion. She couldn’t seem to keep any food down these past mornings …_

She straightens up gingerly before pushing the trolley further down the grocery aisle. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a familiar face and smiles to herself before continuing down the aisle.

“Hello, Miss Whitney."

Miss Whitney looks her up and down, eyes gleaming behind her glasses before responding in a voice only slightly flat. “Well, well. Fancy seein’ _you_ here, Miss High and Mighty.”

Rey smiles, bright and sincere, at the other woman. “I just moved here, actually. A couple of months ago, believe it or not.”

Miss Whitney seems taken aback as she says, “And where are you dancin’ these days, Miss Kira?”

“Oh, haven’t you heard? I’m not called that any longer.” She takes a few steps down the aisle before turning back to look at Miss Whitney for the last time in her life.

“My name is Rey. Rey Logan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Clyde and this Rey so, so much. Thanks for coming along with me on their journey.
> 
> My name is Sierra, and I’m on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/flybluejay_).  
>   
> 


End file.
